City of No Return
by Beazore
Summary: The first chapter of City of Bones from Jace's perspective. Possibly to be continued.
1. Pandemonium

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters, and you know, all the other crap people put in disclaimers. Rated T. This is "Pandemonium" (The first chapter of city of bones) from Jace's perspective. Enjoy, or don't, I don't really care

Pandemonium

"Get up!" She screamed, slapping at his bare chest. "You stupid idiot, I'm never coming here again."

"Fine by me," Jace said mutinously. He'd had enough of her already. He couldn't even remember the name of the waifish girl he had met at Taki's last night.

"You don't even remember my name do you?" she said with a look of disgust evident on her face. _Crap_, Jace thought, it was like she could read his mind, although, if she was part fey, like he'd suspected, she may well be able to.

Looking back at last night, at the haze of whiskey, sushi, and what had then seemed her magnetic gaze through the drunkenness, he swore inwardly. There was no such pull in her eyes this morning. Whether part selkie, kelpi, or nixie, it seemed she wanted to behead him with the forcefulness of her stare. She got none too gently out of bed, wearing a pair of panties, a silk bra, and nothing else. He couldn't think, couldn't even recall the events of last night to try to reason with her.

"Are you going to tell me why you're acting like an irate werewolf, or shall I guess instead?" he drawled. It was always like this the morning after. Him not clear on what had happened, her either upset or infatuated with him. He usually preferred the former; it was much easier to get rid of them then.

"You fu-" she started, but Jace was saved from her tirade by the door to his room flinging open, almost knocking the girl to the floor. As it was, she stumbled and nearly fell before he was out of bed. He had caught her and set her on the bed roughly in less than an instant, not wanting physical contact when she was wearing almost nothing. Before, maybe. Now he just wanted her to leave.

Isabelle stood framed in the doorway, wearing a long, white dress and her electrum whip wrapped around her slim waist. The look of amusement she wore could only mean one thing.

"Time to go, Mr. Player." She said with a grin.

"I am not," Jace said loftily, "a player. A player screws multiple girls over at the same time; I kill them softly with my good looks one after the other." But he was grinning as well. They had this well planned out. When she heard shouts coming from whatever room he and his companion were in, she came and interrupted before there were tears on the girl's face and blood on his. He couldn't count how many times he had been smacked to within an inch of his life by a random girl in his bedroom. _Well,_ he thought wryly, _maybe not within an inch of my life, but close enough. _

As it were, Isabelle looked at the girl with distaste. "A call came in a few minutes ago," she said, speaking to Jace but still staring pointedly at the almost naked girl on the bed, her eyes beseeching, as if she refused to go on in her presence. The dawn light that Jace was expecting turned out to be the late night light of Manhattan. It cascaded around the room, throwing shadows around the three of them and the bright white duvet. It sharpened the planes of the room, making Isabelle look even more dangerous than she usually did.

"I was just leaving." The girl said, Jace suddenly remembered that her name was Kerry, but decided not to mention it for fear of her forgiving him for whatever travesty he had committed while in intoxicated.

"I thought as much," said Isabelle, smirking. "Anyway, Jace" she continued when the girl was safely out of earshot in the bathroom, presumably making herself decent, "we're leaving in fifteen minutes. We're heading to Pandemonium, there were a flock of Eidolon demons spotted and we're free to hunt with everyone else in Idris."

Jace snorted delicately. The Accords would be signed soon, which meant less work for them, in turn meaning less excitement. He wasn't looking forward to this, he was dreading it.

"Fine, I'll be there."

XXXXXXXXXX

He met Isabelle and Alec in the lobby of the Institute with twenty seconds of his fifteen minutes to spare. He was dressed in standard shadowhunter garb, the leathery material he knew fit him like a glove, and he enjoyed it.

Alec was dressed his twin, runes included, apart from the weapons he carried. A strong looking bow was strapped across his back and a featherstaff was nestled in his belt.

Jace on the other hand was armed twice as heavily as Alec and Isabelle combined, as usual. He had several daggers hidden around his person, along with two seraph blades, _Ithuriel _and_ Samael_, arm and leg guards, wrist gauntlets, and his standard demon hunting shoes, black high tops complete silence runes embedded into the soles.

As they set of toward the train, he began to get increasingly excited. The thrill of the hunt always excited him, this was without fail. He fell into the regular practice of saying his blessings to the Angel and thinking back to the lessons his father had taught him years ago. "Get behind them," he used to say. "Get behind them and show no mercy. No matter what they tell you, what they offer you, how much they beg. They don't deserve to live. Leave no trace behind." He had always thought that Michael Wayland was a predatory man. Not ruthless, as many would say, but instead quick and calculated. He never acted without thinking about in length first. Ruthless men would kill without rhyme or reason. "Killing in cold blood," he used to amend, "is not the same as killing without thought or mercy."

His father's voice rang through his head as they drew near Pandemonium. He was on alert, the way he always was in these situations.

The street lights cast an eerie glow around the street. The building was dilapidated and painted a bright, poisonous green. He saw the long snaking line around the front of the club and pitied any mundane who danced inside, the place was a demon attack waiting to happen.

Wrapped in glamour, the three of them waltzed through the front door, past the mundane security guard, and into the pulsating club. House music blasted through the invisible speakers, seeming to come from the walls themselves. All manner of downworlder was present, vampires in the back, drinking suspicious Bloody Mary's, warlocks, impressing counterparts under heavy veils of glamour, and the children of the moon dancing in sweaty congregations.

He stood idly for several moments, taking in his surroundings, something shadowhunters always did in order to gather a forward advantage, when he noticed two mundanes dancing awkwardly near the center of the dance floor. Hardly any of their kind came to Pandemonium, the place usually attracted several homicidal or suicidal human teens a night, true, but these two look perfectly ordinary. _They _are _mundanes_, he thought, _perhaps they have no sense of self preservation_.

But there was something that attracted him to the girl in the duo, she had a shock of ginger hair falling down to her waist, and seemed to be lost in her own mind. _No_, he thought, she wasn't lost in her head, she was staring after something.

With a slight turn, deftly avoiding a pool of vomit that had collected in the corner where they were standing, he followed her gaze. Ah, he thought, here we go. "Alec!" He had to shut to be heard above the music, he pointed to the demon prowling along one of the darkly painted walls, no doubt looking for some life form to extinguish.

Alec laughed nervously, no matter the weapons he carried or the Marks he bore, he was always more of a student than a demonstrator. He tugged on his sister's arm, saying, "Isabelle, it's your time to shine" with a laugh, but his eyes betrayed his fear. He had never liked the fact that she was the bait, he had said as much before.

"Isn't that all the time?" she said with a sly wink, and crossed the room swiftly.

"Not with me in the room baby." Jace called, but she had already fallen into the crowd.

Jace and Alec, Alec with baited breath and Jace with a bored expression, waited while she caught the attention of the demon, and Jace returned his attention to the girl in the center of the dance floor. She seemed upset at something, but resigned, and he even thought he caught a trace of wistfulness in her stare.

Of course, the demon had disguised itself as a human, and a good looking one at that. Not that teenage boys were his preference, no, that was Alec.

But the demon's gaze was fixed on Isabelle. Jealousy was such a pointless emotion, he had manipulated it many times before, but he felt strangely protective of the mundane girl, as if he could stop her from looking at the creature she was so clearly lusting after.

Rage flared within him, but he remained calm on the outside. Turning away from the mundane girl, he and Alec moved toward the storage closet where Isabelle was beckoning to the monster. It licked it's lips hungrily, and they both slipped inside the room. It didn't seem to notice them straight on his heels.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He raised his already drawn blade as he and Alec stalked into the room, faintly realizing that Isabelle was talking to the demon. He pulled Alec into the shadows behind a pillar caked in grime, up and over the electric cables that were carelessly strewed cross the floor. This was the part Isabelle liked best, he knew, and he would let her have her fun.

"You're asking me if I come here often?" she giggled, and, in typical Isabelle fashion, covered her hand with her mouth like a coy schoolgirl, letting the sleeve of her dress slip down over her elbow.

This did not escape the notice of the demon, as it shouldn't have; he drew in a sharp intake of breath, seemingly trying to form a coherent thought behind the panic in his eyes. He didn't get the chance. Isabelle dropped a blow to his chest that would have made her mother proud, knocking the demon to the floor. They were behind her in an instant, but she was already prepared for the demon's retaliation. With a sharp flick of her wrist she bound the boy, or rather, the thing, and secured him to the nearest pillar.

Large amounts of dust were upheaved as the boy tried to free himself to no avail. Jace stepped forward, "are there any more with you?" he said calmly, with the same bored expression.

"Any other what?" it replied frostily, but there was blood on the demons wrists and Jace could tell he was weakening.

"Come on now. You know what I am." Jace replied, and copying Isabelle, bared his forearms at the boy.

He seemed to shrink back, not in terror, but in revulsion, and a single word hissed through his lips, "Shadowhunter."

Jace let slip his bored façade and wore a mask of triumph and amusement. "Got you. That's right big boy," he dropped a wink, "And we came just for you."

"Bound his feet, Iz," Alec said lazily, "We can't have him crawling away from us." Jace had to commend him, though he knew his friend well, knew that he was scared, he knew Alec had the cool reflexes of a great warrior in battle. Even though they were only chasing a single demon in a dank hut in a decaying nightclub, he supposed these senses still came in handy.

"So," Jace said tauntingly, "You still haven't told me if there are any other of your kind with you." He began to pace, crossing his arms over his chest to hide the adrenaline coursing through his veins and making his fingers tremble slightly. They had never done so out of fear, only excitement.

"I don't know what you're talking about." The demon boy replied haughtily, but his voice betrayed the pain he felt.

Alec seemed to have lost patience, "He means other demons, you do know what a demon is, don't you?" he said in a bored manner. The thrill of the chase meant nothing to Alec.

"Demons," Jace said, tracing the word in the air to emphasize his point, point being that they had all the time in the world to torture him. "Religiously defined as Hell's denizens, the servants of Satan," he had the pleasure of watching the boy look at him defensively, demons did not correlate around the biblical stories; they usually came to this dimension of their own accord, and tended to get temperamental when people thought otherwise. "But," he continued, "Understood here, for the purposes of the Clave to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension-"

Isabelle cut him off, "That's enough Jace." He hardly thought it was fair, had he not let her have her fun?

"Isabelle's right," Alec amended, shooting him a withering look. Jace responded with a dangerous smile, one he knew attracted girls and terrified boys. It had the intended effect. The demon and Alec both looked paler, Alec sounding slightly more hesitant when he said, "Nobody here needs a lesson in semantics- or demonology."

"Isabelle and Alec think I talk too much, do you think I talk too much?" he said to he boy, whose hair was spiked around his head in a halo of blue. _That's ironic_, Jace thought, _a demon with a halo_.

The demon swore, his words sounding like crackling flames, then, in English, it said, "I could give you information, I know where Valentine is." Hatred towards the man who had killed his father, and in turn towards the thing writhing against it's restraints rose up inside him. He looked toward Alec to calm himself, succeeding as Alec turned to him, shrugging. "Valentine's in the ground," he said. "The thing's just toying with us."

Isabelle managed to supremely unconcerned about this piece of potential information. She flipped her hair and said, "Kill it Jace, it's not going to tell us anything."

Jace was glad to comply, he raised his hand, the gleaming seraph blade he was holding throwing contrasts through the small room.

"Valentine is back!" the thing gasped. He was twisting, trying to get further toward the small window set in the roof of the storage room. "All the Infernal Worlds know it-I know it- I can tell you where he is!"

Rage once more swelled within him. He refused to believe this horrible, ugly _thing_, because it didn't belong in this dimension, because that hit too close to home. His father had taught him to let nothing close to his heart. _Show no mercy. No matter what they tell you, what they offer you, how much they beg. They don't deserve to live. Leave no trace behind. _His father's words fueled the hate in his tone. "By the Angel! Every time we capture one of you bastards, you claim to know where Valentine is!" _And it never fails to anger me,_ Jace thought. A feeling of self loathing enveloped him. He started flipping the blade between his fingers, a nervous habit of his. "Well," he said, with a devastating grin, "we know where he is. He's in hell. And you, you can _join him there._"

"STOP!" the voice was not familiar. Jace whirled, so startled that he dropped the blade. He swore, not much surprised him, but this was new. It was the mundane girl he had been watching from the entrance. "You can't do this!" she cried.

Her eyes were frantic, and her expression was of horror, unlike the masks of astonishment that met them from around the room.

_"What's this?_" Alec hissed, looking at him and Isabelle. Isabelle seemed lost for words, her mouth gaping open. Jace gained his composure faster than the others and responded sarcastically as he usually did in situations that made him uncomfortable, "It's a girl Alec, surely you've seen girls before, your sister Isabelle is one." Isabelle flashed him a look of annoyance that he usually took to mean he was forgiven. But the light tone of his voice didn't match the astonishment he felt. "A mundie girl," he said, his voice softer. "And she can see us."

"Of course I can see you," the girl responded. Her voice was high and clear as a ringing glass, and flecked with annoyance. "I'm not blind you know."

"Oh but you are" Jace said, in that same inexplicably soft voice. He couldn't understand what brought him to speak like this, it couldn't be sheer amazement. He picked his knife up off of the floor, just for something to distract him from her gaze. He straightened up, looking towards her with and expression he hoped didn't show the curiosity he felt. "You better get out of here, if you know what's good for you."

"I'm not going anywhere. If I do," she pointed at the demon, "You'll kill him."

"That's true," Jace said, almost, but not quite apologetically. Her sudden presence had driven thoughts of his father from his mind, but now they were back in full force. He began playing with his seraph blade again, it gave him a sense of normalcy that the girl took from him. A thought occurred to him, "What do you care if I kill him or not?" Maybe she was an enemy of the Clave. He ought to be less trusting.

"Be-Because, you can't just go round killing people!" she spluttered.

Jace smirked, _she's clearly just a mundane_, and yet this thought perturbed him more than when he had thought she may be an enemy. "You're right," he smirked, "You can't just go around killing _people._ That's not a person little girl." As he pointed toward the demon on the floor, who still seemed beyond the ability to speak coherently, whether in pain or astonishment, he didn't know, he realized he had no idea what her name was. "It may look like a person and talk like a person and maybe even _bleed _like a person." He drew the word "bleed" out until the demon regained its wits, just in time to blanche and avert it's eyes. "But it's a monster."

"Jace," Isabelle said reprovingly. She looked at him and her eyes seemed urgent, like they were cursing him and questioning his motives at the same time. "That's enough."

"You're crazy," the girl said, backing away, toward the far wall and the door. "I've called the police, you know. They'll be here any second." Jace could feel the fear coming off her in waves, and realized with a start that it was because of _them_, not the demon standing bound behind them.

"She's lying," Alec said doubtfully. "Jace do you-"

But he didn't finish his interruption of Jace's reverie, because the demon, taking advantage of Jace's momentary inattentiveness, tore free of the whip and manacles bounding it, its hands curving into claws, and its sharp teeth bared. It fell upon Jace with a screech, knocking him to the ground. Jace whipped around, flinging himself on top of the boy, he was faintly ware of the girl falling too, as if she were tripping over something. He didn't have time to wonder, because at that moment the demon rolled on top of him, all the while clawing at him, sending blood spurting everywhere. Jace threw an arm up to protect himself and the thing clawed at it, sending a raking pain up his arm.

A flash of gold struck cross his vision and the demon toppled howling, freeing Jace from under it's weight. There was already a seraph blade in his hand as he righted himself, and in one graceful movement he sunk the blade into the boy's chest, right where his heart would be. Blood streamed from the wound, and the demon began to fold in on itself, heading back to whatever hellish dimension it came from.

Jace straightened with a look of disgust. He had never liked this part, everything seeming to implode, leaving nothing of the battle behind but bruises and injuries on his part. He reached down and plucked the knife from between the demons ribs, it was coated from tip to hilt with black blood.

The demon opened it's eyes, and just before disappearing screamed, "_So be it. The Forsaken will take you all._" Jace half grinned. _Let them try, _he thought.

He turned around, and realized with a jolt that the girl was still there. Isabelle had apparently had the same notion. She flicked her wrist angrily and caught the girl around the wrist, who had up until then been turning as if to flee.

"Stupid little mundie," she growled. "You could have gotten Jace killed!"

"He's crazy." she said. "You're all crazy. What do you think you are, vigilante killers? The police will-"

"The police usually aren't interested unless you can produce a body." Jace said, _though if the police are from Chinatown they might understand,_ he felt like chuckling darkly under his breath for added effect, thinking of the werewolf encampments in the abandoned precincts, but felt it was somewhat out of place. Holding his injured arm, he walked towards the girl, skirting cables and fallen daggers. He heard Alec trailing him, though he couldn't make himself care. He focused on the girl, now glancing in the direction of the demons disappearance, and said, "They return to their home dimensions when they die. In case you were wondering.

"_Jace_," Alec said warningly, "Be careful."

"She can see us Alec, she already knows too much." Jace said gingerly. Best not to upset Alec's fragile temperament at a time like this.

Isabelle seemed outraged at his lack of hostility towards the girl, in some part of his mind he realized that she felt how he should, but he couldn't make himself feel anything but raw curiosity. "So what do you want me to do with her?" She said eagerly, she clearly wanted to kill this girl where she stood for disrupting their hunt.

"Let her go." He said, and he was using the same soft voice he had before. Isabelle looked at him angrily as if he had lost his mind, but released the girl from her bindings. The whip slipped away, leaving a circular welt on the girl's wrist. Her incredulity hung in the air, and fueled Jace's curiosity even more. He wondered why he _cared. _He shouldn't care what happened to her. He should feel the cool distaste that Isabelle clearly felt. But there was something that made him want to calm this girl down and tell her that everything was fine. He didn't.

"Maybe we should bring her back with us," Alec said, and for the second time in five minutes broke Jace out of thoughts of the girl. "I bet Hodge would like to talk to her." Jace was about to protest, Hodge would surely question this girl to the point of breaking, but Isabelle beat him to it.

"No way are we ringing her to the Institute," she said. "She's a _mundie._" She dragged out the last word like it should pain everyone in the room to hear it.

"Or is she?" said Jace quietly. His curiosity was more than should be warranted, he didn't just want to interrogate this girl, he just wanted to know her answers. "Have you had dealings with demons, little girl?" That was all she was, he told himself. No matter if she could see them. She was just a little girl. He became brusquer when he asked, "Have you walked with warlocks, talked with the Night Children? Have you-."

But she cut him off, seeming truly angry as she said, "My name is not little girl, and I have no idea what you're talking about." He was just about to ask her what her name _was _when he realized her voice was doubtful, her eyes seeming to give her hesitance away as she said, "I don't believe in- in demons, or whatever you-"

The door flew open behind her and she whirled around, caught off guard. Jace's gaze flicked upward. The boy she had been dancing with earlier was standing in on the threshold, a look of something, protectiveness for the girl, Jace realized, plastered on his mundane face. With him stood a burly bouncer, his arms roped with muscle, looking tough but whom Jace was sure he could dispatch with one blow if he felt a mind to.

"Clary," the boy said, his voice rough with worry for the girl, for _Clary, _he corrected himself. Jace found himself wondering against his will whether or not they were romantically linked. "Are you okay? Why are you in here by yourself? What happened to the guys- you know, the ones with the knives?" Jace laughed quietly to himself behind the girl, she had seen two heavily armed teenage boys running through a Manhattan nightclub at midnight and the best she could do was one bouncer? She didn't seem to notice, but she turned around, staring at Jace, Isabelle, and Alec in turn before assuming a resigned look and facing her friend again.

Jace was already halfway to the window, dragging Alec and Isabelle after him, when she spoke again. He knew she had realized that only she could see them and wondered whether she thought she was going crazy or not. Then he thought of the welts Isabelle had left on her wrists, _leave no trace behind. _

"I thought they went in here," the girl said, "But I guess they didn't. I'm sorry."

Isabelle giggled partway to the window, loud enough for Clary to hear. As they crawled through the window and out into the smoggy Manhattan air, one thing ran through Jace's mind. Just her name.

_Clary. _

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Done, if you guys like it ill continue, if not, then I guess ill figure that out by myself lol don't be TOO harsh though, please, this is the first time ever writing for me, much less posting it on the internet. Hope you liked it, please review and comment on whether you want it to continue.


	2. Truths and Beginnings

**Disclaimer: I don't own crap. Well, that's not entirely true, I do own parts of the plot and a bed and panties and frozen dumplings and stuff like that, but sadly I don't own Jace, even if I **_**can**_** make him do my bidding. Thank you to everyone for boosting my spirits and confidence yesterday with comments and favorites and stuff like that, hope you'll do the same after this ****. Here's chapter two. Enjoy, or don't, I really don't care ****:**

XXXXXXXXXXX

**Truths and Beginnings**

Jace was staring at himself in the mirror.

He _looked _the same. Chiseled features, muscular build, tousled blonde hair, he noted with satisfaction. He _smelled _the same; sweat and his favorite lime scented soap. He just couldn't figure out what could have made him _feel_ so different.

The lighting in the room? No. The dim light in his en suite bathroom was normal, making everything slightly luminescent. It threw shadows across his face, but made him look no more sallow than usual.

He eventually realized it was his eyes, their usual bright gold changed to a darker ocher. He wasn't sure exactly why this bothered him. He'd had much worse, broken bones, facial burns; but with those came a sense of pride. Jace had always come home to the Institute and seen himself as a warrior, one who incurred injury for the greater good. His eyes changing color simply made him look more hectic.

He took a deep breath. Jace had slipped to his room the moment they had arrived, wanting to avoid Hodge and his questions. But now he wanted company, something that was rare for him. Jace pushed himself away from the sink that he had been leaning on and moved to his bedroom, where he threw on a fresh set of hunting clothes. He felt himself thinking again how these clothes made him feel normal, and the missing connection snapped into place. The reason why he felt odd, out of place.

_Clary._

He hadn't spoken her name since seeing her. He probably would never see her again. For some reason this irked him. Not because she was special, she was just a mundane girl. He'd seen plenty of them leave his side without a thought. Maybe it was just that her life was normal, and his was not. Her life had started to turn towards the strange; she could see through glamour after all, and maybe he expected his life to do the opposite, to become more normal. _That will never happen, _he thought. _My life has never been normal_, _why should it start now?_

With a sigh he started towards the library. The corridors of the institute were cold as usual, the lanterns on the walls casting shadows in odd places. He wasn't looking forward to facing his tutor, Hodge would probably scold him for letting the girl leave without interrogating her. As he stepped onto the threshold of the library, the domed ceiling sparking rays of soft afternoon light through the room, his feeling of apprehension increased. Alec and Izzy were standing in front of Hodge's desk, their eyes cast down as the man lay into them.

"What were you _thinking_?" he chided. "This girl can _see through glamour_! You didn't even stop to think if she wasn't really a mundane? You never think!"

Hodge's insults blended together into a meaningless jumble of nonsense as Jace approached the desk. The mahogany angels that made the legs looked especially sad today, as if they pitied the young people set to stand trial.

"Hodge, calm down." Said Isabelle, speaking for the first time, it seemed. "She had no idea about anything, she looked _surprised_ she couldsee us."

"We wouldn't have let her leave if we thought she was dangerous." Alec chimed in, his expression solemn.

"They're right, Hodge," said Jace. At the sound of his voice all three of them started, they were so busy bickering that they apparently hadn't noticed him come in. "She wasn't dangerous. Do you really question our ability to differentiate between killer and benign at this point?" Yes, she wasn't dangerous, at least not that he could tell, but she was intriguing.

He pushed this thought out of his mind as he set out to turn the conversation around, a useful skill he had learned at around the age of seven. "Have some faith Hodge, don't you trust us?"

With this last sentence he cast a deploring look upon the tutor, and was rewarded with a softening in Hodge's tone. "Of course," Hodge said, "Don't be ridiculous, I do trust you, children." However Hodge was privy to tricks, it seemed, and his voice became harsh again as he added, "It's your _judgment _I don't always trust. Do you have any idea the consequences of letting a possible enemy get away? No, you don't. I do. The deaths, pain, suffering it can cause _aren't_ _worth the risk._" Jace was intrigued. Hodge had never spoken of his past to them before, only bothering to mention he couldn't leave the Institute because of a curse that had been set upon him years before. Hodge's face was unreadable as he continued. "I want you to go and fetch the girl. No matter how mundane she may be, she still clearly has a place in this world, in the _real _world. She can see through-"

"I'll go," said Jace, surprising himself, and also, it appeared, everyone else in the room. "If she is dangerous, better to know now than later." He said quickly, "After all, what could lure her to the institute faster than my stunning good looks and striking wit?"

"Oh shut up and leave, you ass." said Isabelle, but she was grinning.

"Do you want me to go with you?" asked Alec eagerly, but Jace waved him off.

"No, she may feel ambushed. Besides," he added, so as not to hurt his friend's feelings, "more than one of could cause a scene if she reacts badly, and 'one moves faster than all'. You taught me that."

Alec was grinning, causing Jace to suppress a smile. Stroking someone's ego was the oldest trick in the book. This conversation was repetitive. Jace wanted the sense of adventure this task would result in, and he wanted it for himself.

"All right," Alec said, somewhat reluctantly, "Go. But come back quick, I wanted to show you the engraved featherstaff I bought on 42nd street yesterday."

"What's the engraving say?"

"It's not important." Alec said sheepishly.

"Let me guess, it says 'I love my Mommy'."

"No! It says, "Congratulations on your new baby boy' actually, it was on discount."

"Isn't that a little King Solomon for your taste?"

Hodge seemed oblivious to this exchange, "Jace, go. The sooner the better."

"And if she doesn't want to come willingly?"

"Arm yourself heavily."

Jace grinned. "Those are my favorite words."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Jace arrived at Pandemonium about an hour later, armed for war. He didn't know what the girl could possibly _be_, so he had brought all manner of artillery with him; vials of holy water, silver powder, and numerous blades. And this was assuming, of course, that she was even a threat. He highly doubted it.

This was the first thing he had to determine, and he had no idea where she lived. He didn't have a warlock handy to track her, and even if he _was_ in cahoots with a child of Lilith, he had nothing of hers to track.

Jace crawled down into the quiet club – it hadn't opened yet, it was too early – and into the dank and treacherous utility closet that had served as the demons pyre the night before.

_Was it really only yesterday?_ Jace thought to himself. It felt like it could have been both fifty years and five minutes ago.

It was humid in the club, the heat wave that had hit the city was oppressive, and sweat plastered his fair hair to the nape of his neck. The closet looked the same, he noted, just as dark as last night, cables strewn across the floor, and the same dank musty odor; now shot through with the deathly smell of demons. The only difference was the collection of darker shadows in the corner.

Jace started. He wasn't panicked; he had dealt with multiple attackers before, but their presence unsettled him. Not many demons came in packs of ten to visit a fallen comrade.

"Came back to cover your late friend's tracks boys? Or girls, you're all so ugly I can't really tell."

They spun, not having noticed Jace dropping quietly as a cat through the window hatch, and hissed collectively. He drew a seraph blade from his belt, whispered, "_Jahoel." _and, in a defensive crouch, took in their surprised faces. "He's dead, I personally took care of him last night. Don't worry though; he put up quite the fight." He winked conspiratorially, which seemed to enrage them.

"Don't you _dare _speak about Natanel ever again, human." said a female voice from the center of the cluster of demons. They were Confius demons, Jace noted; human shaped, they were known for their loyalty to a master and ability to flock together.

"Why, are you upset I killed your boyfriend babycakes?" Jace taunted. "Because he wasn't exactly putting up a fight when my sister was beckoning him to a private room last night." The demon hissed, and Jace smiled, a feral glint in his eye. "So tell me, why are so many ugly things like you gathering in a place like this?" He glanced faux-thoughtfully around the tiny, damp space, "It seems a bit high class for your kind."

"We are here, Shadowhunter, because we have been sent." This was said by another, different voice in the center. The voice was female, and so full of authority that he had no doubt this was the leader of the gathering.

This didn't surprise Jace; it was unusual for there to be someone powerful enough to control a dozen Eidolon demons, but even less likely that they had come here of their own accord.

"And what exactly have you been sent _for _demon?"

"Give me a reason, Shadowhunter, as to why I should tell you the inner workings of our master's plan?"

In response Jace grabbed a dagger from around his waist with the hand not clutching the angel blade, and flung it with lightning speed. It flew through the air as swiftly and fluidly as water towards the demon nearest him; at the moment it's appearance was of a young girl, the only thing betraying it's true origins were it's talons, long, black, and sharp enough to pierce through a human heart.

The girl screamed as the blade struck home, sending her staggering backward, black fluid pouring from her cut throat. She immediately began to fold in upon herself, returning to whatever hellish world she had come from.

This had the intended effect, her posse watched with disbelief the main expression on their faces.

Jace cocked his head to the side and looked at the group innocently. "Was that a good reason?"

"How _dare_ you Shadowhunter."

"O I dare," he said teasingly, wrinkling his nose for an added bonus. Then he continued, his voice harsher, more threatening, "and if you don't want it to happen again, you will tell me what I want to know."

"And who is to say you will not kill another of my group even if I do comply?" the head demon responded, still concealed by the greater mass in front of her.

"The fact that I'll kill _all _of you if you don't." The menace in his voice rang throughout the room, and he saw several demons in the back murmuring amongst themselves. _Perfect, _he thought. His father had taught him how to asses the ties in groups, and had always said that in breaking one bond, you break them all. "Once a group is divided, it is that much easier to destroy them." He pushed thoughts of his father out of his mind, as he was always forced to do in battle situations, and focused on the leader of the clan.

She had stepped out from behind the demons protecting her, and looked to be cracking under the pressure. Her skin was blue, her hair snow white, and in examining her he noted that she held something small and black in her right hand.

A charcoal pencil.

He realized several things in that instant; one, that this woman was not a demon, she was a warlock. Two, that the demons surrounding her were not her clan, but her bodyguards. And three, that the pencil was the same one sticking out of Clary's pocket the night before.

"Where did you get that?" he demanded.

A sly smile crossed her lips. _Crap, _he thought. _Can't let her know I have anything to do with the girl. _"And why do you care, Shadowhunter? You are Nephilim," she said, her voice full of false praise. "The blood of the Angel runs through your veins, the power of God hath been bestowed upon you, the –"

"No one does sarcasm but me, bitch." He said, his voice full of childlike sweetness. "Now tell me what you need with a pencil. Surely you can just zap up notes to yourself?" he continued, his tone serious, "To-Do list: go shopping, check. Do bidding of mysterious evil do-er, check."

She raised her eyebrows at this, whether in surprise at his sarcasm or the fact that he had seen through her for what she was he didn't know. She managed to look affronted, then careful.

"I came here," the witch began slowly, "to track a girl. Surely you know the one I speak of, otherwise you would not be here, not that I don't enjoy your bracing company." she added with a smirk.

Jace ignored this last remark. "And who sent you for this girl?", Jace asked, his voice berating.

The next word came out in a half fearful, half reverential hiss, sending chills down his spine_. "Valentine."_.

Yet again he became absurdly angry at the mention of this man. "Enough with all this Valentine crap." he said calmly. "Someone is clearly using his name to do dirty work without getting tied to it."

"You do not understand little boy, he is _back._"

"My name is not _little boy,_" he began, and then smirked, casting his eyes downward. That was what he had called the girl last night, "_little girl"_, and she responded just as he had.

Jace's gaze flickered up, and as he pushed his damp hair out of his eyes he saw that the witch was now wielding a deadly looking stream of blue flame, grinning at him over the shadows it cast on her face. _Did I regret not knowing a warlock before? _He thought, not without a trace of humor, _Well I do now._

He quickly unsheathed his other seraph blade and whispered it's namesake. It roared to life, it's blazing light causing the demons nearest to flinch back.

"Do you really want to sacrifice all of these lovely creatures to save yourself?" His tone was sarcastic, but his eyes were calculating. He could not allow this woman to escape with the girl's belonging. She would turn it in to her master, whoever the hell _that_ was, and Clary would be set upon by all manner of demon.

Even in the midst of oncoming chaos, he couldn't help but wonder why he _cared. _While part of his brain was consumed with the thought of battle strategies – how to keep the witch here while combating a dozen demons – the idle part of his brain was preoccupied with thoughts of the girl.

_Will I tell her that I saved her life before I even knew her?_

_ Would she care?_

Thenthe first demon lunged at him, cutting off his inner monologue. It raked it's claws along his arm, tearing through the pliable material of his shirt. He dispatched it with a single blow from his sword, and it's head flew off to the right, disconnected from the rest it's body. The other demons seemed to feel that there was safety in numbers, gathering in a semi-circle, surrounding him. Jace grinned; he knew they were dead wrong.

He jumped, flipping in the air ten feet above the demons heads as he stuck the seraph blades in his belt, in their stead pulling out two vials of holy water, throwing the contents onto the mass of bodies below. There was a chorus of bloodcurdling screams, and he saw that all but three of them lay on the floor, crumpling into themselves. He also saw the witch running towards the exit, taking advantage of his distracted state. He discarded the empty bottles in his hands, and seized a dagger from where it rested on his arm sheath. He threw it, and it spun in the air, sparkling like a diamond in the low light. It went through the witch's wrist, pinning her to the wall, and as she shrieked and tried to pull free, he jumped lightly from where his feet had come to rest on a large speaker, and landed in a crouch in front of the remaining demons.

They snarled, two of them descending upon him while the other fell back, presumably to aid the witch struggling in the corner. Jace drew another dagger, pleased that he had decided to bring extra, and jumped again, higher his time, spinning in the air until he was facing the fleeing demon, with the face of a teenage boy. Jace used the dagger to slash the monsters throat, coating himself and the floor in dark blood that burned his injured forearm.

Wincing, he turned around. The other two demons were still facing the other direction, he had moved so fast they hadn't seen him. He took the sill blazing seraph blades from his belt and plunged them into the demons backs. They writhed as blood pulsated through the jagged wounds, and with final gurgling screams, fell silent.

The only two people in the room now were Jace and the witch, every other inhabitant having been returned to a different dimension. He loped to the other side of the room, skirting wires and pools of blood that were dissipating along with their demonic counterparts.

"Now," Jace said to the witch, whom he was now facing. "You will do as I say, or I will kill you."

"You will kill me anyway, Nephilim." She said, hate in her narrowed eyes.

"I swear in the name of the Angel Raziel, and in the name of the battle that never ends – which is ironic, since that battle is against you – that I will not kill if you do what I wish, and that would be a tracking spell."

"Fine, Nephilim, you will have your spell." She glared at him with suspicious eyes, and began to speak, staring intently at the pencil concealed in her unpinned hand. An eerie chanting of crackling flames filled the room, the only other sound apart from Jace's even breathing.

Finished, she threw the pencil to the ground in disgust, swearing. "Now free me, Shadowhunter, you swore it."

"Wrong. I swore not to _kill_ you." Jace took his Sensor from his pocket, dialing runes until he heard a faint _click. _A beam of blue light shot through the small space_, _like something from a sci-fi movie. "I never swore not to leave you here for the Clave to find." He had already snapped a photo of the closet, and was moving towards the window, ignoring the witch's outraged shouts.

"You will regret this Jonathan M–"

But he had already shut the window pane behind him, cutting off her frantic shouts, not bothering to wonder how she knew his first name.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Holding his stele to the charcoal pencil, Jace pictured Clary in is mind's eye. In a flash he was no longer outside on the humid streets of the Lower East Side.

_He was standing in front of a dark red brownstone. The bottom floor was windowless, and there was a sign above the alcove that read, "Madame Dorothea's Physic Services". The air was shot through with the shouts of children, indicating a playground nearby, a school or park. He was looking up at the second story from the avenue below. Voices drifted from above, a deeper voice, a man's, and then one that rang like glass. _

_Now where to start looking? _Jace wondered. It was a very unremarkable house, there were countless others in the city, and he wasn't even sure what borough it was in.

This was a dilemma, he was cloaked in glamour, so he couldn't ask for help, but how could he anyways? He couldn't exactly walk up to a mundane, hold up a shiny glowing white stick to a pencil and ask, "Have you seen this building?"

He swore under his breath. He was running out of time. If the witch had already been sent after the girl, there would be more where she came from. Once the sun set the girl would be fair game to every demon in the city.

Vexed, Jace tried to recall the details of last night with more clarity. She had been wearing a dark colored shirt, skinny jeans, and had had the pencil sticking out of her front pants pocket. _She must have dropped it when she fell, _he realized belatedly. Regardless, this didn't help him much. He tried to remember what her companion had been wearing – friend? boyfriend? Jace couldn't help wondering, – and recalled that he had been wearing a worn out looking t-shirt that read "MADE IN BROOKLYN".

_Finally, _Jace thought,_ something to go by_. He cast a quick glance at his surroundings, feeling a sense of ambition as he set off towards a bodega on the corner.

Once inside – thankful for the air conditioner, it was still so hot – he slipped behind the deserted counter and grabbed a phonebook. Sure enough, there were four different Madame Dorothea's listed, and only one in Brooklyn. Jace was instantly thankful to the awkward boy for his fashion choice, no matter how he felt about him as a person.

Jace stepped out into the muggy street, reluctant to leave the cool shop, but excited that he seemed to have made some progress. Looking up and down the empty boulevard, he could hear the rumble of a train approaching from underground, and sprinted to the nearest subway entrance. Hopping the turnstile – no one could see him, after all, why buy a metrocard? - he ran to the doors, slipping inside just as a mechanical man's voice rang through the nearly empty car, saying, "_Stand clear of the closing doors please." _This was followed by the telltale _ding, ding, _of the departure warning and the roar of the engine coming to life.

He was out of the subway and in Brooklyn within the next half hour, running from the nearest stop to the address he had memorized. Jace had been sprinting for twenty minutes, so he was panting and relived when he saw a street he recognized. It housed one of his favorite Mexican take out joints, the one that Alec had showed his the summer before last, after finding it's review in "Reader's Digest".

Jace stepped inside the restaurant, deciding that he would stop and get some food before continuing. He had been running for a while, and he was only a few blocks from the girl's house. Then he heard a familiar voice. The girl, Clary, was sitting at one of the low, wobbly tables in the corner, her gangly friend across from her.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

**Thanks for reading **** leave comments, concerns, and stuff like that in the inbox, I enjoy reading them lol. Trig and chem regents (standardized tests) are tomorrow and the day after, so the next chapter is done but I need to read it over. It'll be up in the next day or so. Let me know if you think the chapters are too long, I think chapter 3 is even longer than this one. Also, I want a new name for the story. "City of" something would be nice, since it's essentially the same series of events in some places, if you have thoughts (and I hope you do, for your sake). Thank you guys for everything **

**Love, K**


	3. Mundane

**Disclaimer: same old crap. I dislike pumpernickel. This chapter's pretty long, too long? Thank you for all the wonderful comments and stuff, you guys are the best ****Rachel, you wanted a shout out, so here it is. Here's chapter three, enjoy, or don't, I really don't care ****:**

**Mundane **

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Jace wasn't expecting to find her without a bit more work, but he didn't feel any shock at seeing her. He knew he ought to, but he was growing used to the sense of the unexpected where she was concerned. It unsettled him again, the fact that he felt disconcerted by her. He was Nephilim, part angel! He had seen the hosts of Hell and defeated them by the hundreds, and he felt odd because of an insignificant human girl.

Rage flooded through him, not entirely at her, but at himself. As the two teenagers at the table rose to go, Jace followed, a lingering resentment flowing freely. He felt stupid for thinking about her before in the club, wondering if he should tell her he saved her life. _It doesn't matter_!He thought angrily, _she's just a girl_, _albeit one I may have to kill. _

As they left the restaurant, Jace on their heels, he saw their destination. It was a mundane coffee shop, and a worn sign out front read, "POETRY NIGHT, AMATURES WELCOME". As Clary and the boy entered the shop, Jace was torn. Should he follow? It might risk too much. She could _see_ him after all, he thought. He would slip inside and then wait until she was preoccupied, he decided. _Then there's just the small task of getting her to follow a stranger who's been stalking her to a strange place that only we can see. _Jace thought. _Too bad I don't have any candy._

Jace ended up entering the club about two minutes later, too impatient to continue watching the pair from the corner he had sought refuge girl's friend – Simon apparently – was sitting next to her on a dingy looking loveseat near the back of the shop, looking uncomfortable. "Please don't tell anyone I know him." The boy pleaded. Ah, so the pervert on the stage was his friend.

The girl laughed, "Who uses the word 'loins'?"

"Eric." The mundane boy said. "All his poems have the word loins in them."

"Anyway," she continued, "about that girl who thinks you're cute-"

Jace abruptly wished he had entered with them. Although it was clear that the girl in question was sitting directly across from them, as she was listening intently to the conversation, he wanted to know how the topic had come up. It was generally interesting to listen to come-ons, especially between two girls.

"_Follow your own star! Lead the way to Hell!_" At this Jace was taken aback, he hadn't expected someone so vulgar to know the works of Dante.

He leaned forward, listening more closely just as the mundane boy interrupted Clary.

"Never mind that for a second, there's something I wanted to talk to you about." He was struggling, that much was evident from his tone, but Clary didn't seem to realize.

"Furious Mole is not a good name for a band." She said teasingly. _What?_

"Not about that, it's about what we were talking about before, about me not having a girlfriend." Jace had to stifle a laugh at that; that didn't exactly surprise him.

"Oh." Said the girl, shrugging. "Oh I don't know, ask Jaida Jones out. She's nice, and she like's you." Another stifled laugh on Jace's part, he doubted this as well.

"I don't want to ask Jaida Jones out." Now the boy looked truly traumatized, and Jace was amazed that Clary was this slow witted. The boy was clearly trying to propose his undying adoration for her and she didn't seem interested in the _least_.

"Why not? Still seeking a 'rockin' bod'?" Her voice was harsher as she said this, and somewhat resentful, causing him to reconsider her apparent lack of attraction to the boy.

"Neither," the boy said, seeming to be losing patience. "I don't want to ask her out because it wouldn't really be fair to her if I did." He finished this last statement with a nauseous expression, and Jace briefly considered using that as an excuse to pull the girl after him out of the coffee shop. He didn't want her covered in vomit when she arrived at the Institute, after all.

"Why not?"

"Because I like someone else." He still looked queasy.

"Okay." The girl seemed confused, as if she couldn't decode the meaning of the conversation. "You're not gay are you?" Jace pondered briefly the possibility of introducing him to Alec.

"If I were, I would dress better." The boy responded. _Well there goes that, _Jace thought, and he couldn't help laughing. He managed to turn it into a cough at the last second, but it was loud enough to catch the attention of those who had the ability to hear it.

The girl twisted sharply in her seat, and her eyes, which had before been full of confusion and empathy, were suddenly full of shock as she stared at him, mouth agape. He felt the same sense of pleasure he always felt when girls looked him up and down like this – satisfaction mixed with a bit of lust - but this was somehow different. Her gaze searched him, calculating while taking him in; resting lightly on the dagger secured at his wrist. Underlying that usual sense of satisfaction was something new he couldn't pinpoint, it made him feel more exposed than usual; and he had been pretty exposed in front of these types of gazes before.

"What is it?" her friend asked. His tone was full of both concern for the girl and annoyance at having been interrupted from his moment of declaration.

Jace smirked, raising his hand in a wave that appeared to shock the girl even further. He felt the need to antagonize her as she had to him, if unintentionally; so he rose and started toward the exit in a bored manner, knowing she would follow.

Jace heard her murmur an excuse to her friend, and then her footsteps rushing after him.

As he stepped out into the alley and positioned himself into a nonchalant posture against one of the walls, she sprang through the doorway, looking wildly around for him. Jace smirked again at the frantic look on her face.

"Your friend's poetry is terrible." He said in greeting.

"What?" the girl asked, dumfounded.

"I said his poetry is terrible," Jace said, grinning wickedly. "It sounds like he ate a dictionary and started vomiting up words at random."

She was furious now, it was strangely endearing. She looked rather like a baby tiger trying to kill a mountain lion. Jace, of course, being the mountain lion.

"I don't care about Eric's poetry," she almost yelled. "I want to know why you're following me!"

"Who said I was following you?" _At least not at first, _he amended.

"Nice try. And you were eavesdropping too." Jace resisted the urge to laugh, a strange boy was following her around and she was upset he had been listening in? She sounded even angrier as she continued, "Do you want to tell me what this is about, or should I just call the police?" That probably wouldn't help, considering that about half of the city's police force were from a different dimension. He tried to dissuade her from that course of action; if the Shadowhunters bothered her, he couldn't imagine how she would respond to more demons. "And tell them what?" He said sarcastically, "That invisible people are bothering you? Trust me, _little_ _girl_," he wanted to smile again at the thought of their similar responses to the name – he didn't – "the police aren't going to arrest someone they can't see."

Jace was able to predict the girl's response this time, and it amused him. "I told you before," she said, "my name is not little girl. It's Clary." _Oh I know_,he thought, _your name has been running through my mind for the last 24-hours, for reasons I can't begin to comprehend._

Jace kept this last thought to himself, opting for, "I know. Pretty name, like the herb, clary-sage. In the old days people thought eating the seeds would let you see the fair folk. Did you know that?" He was just showing off now.

Jace didn't know what to expect anymore. Did he think she would bust out with, "Of course! I _am_ a fairy after all!" She was short enough to be a fairy, he supposed. She was also beautiful enough, with her soft features and cascading red hair. But she didn't have the right amount of malice, Jace thought, considering. The fair folk were known for their cruelty, and there was none of that in her open, green eyes.

He was right. She was not one of the Fair Folk, because she was looking at him with eyes that questioned sanity, his or her own he couldn't tell. "I have no idea what you're talking about." She said pointedly. Ah, his sanity it was then.

"You don't know much do you?" Jace said derisively. "You seem to be a mundane like any other mundane, yet you can see me. It's a conundrum."

The girl – Clary, as Jace supposed he should start thing of her – appeared momentarily surprised that he knew the word "conundrum". But she just asked, "What's a _mundane_?"

"Someone of the human world. Someone like you."

Her brow puckered. "But _you're _human."

Jace considered this. He supposed that she was right, he _was_ human, but the Nephilim were not often confused with mundanes. "I am." Jace sad thoughtfully, "but I'm not like you."

"You think you're better!" Clary said, sounding outraged. She wasn't entirely wrong, but in _general_ Jace thought he was better than everyone, the Nephilim as a whole did not. "That's why you were laughing at us!"

The way she said the "us" confirmed his belief that she had no feelings for the nerdy boy. Her tone was defensive, one you would use when speaking of a brother or sister; it betrayed no passion whatsoever.

"I was laughing at you because declarations of love amuse me, especially when unrequited." Jace said, smirking. "And because your Simon is one of the most mundane mundanes I've ever encountered." This was true, if just because he had not met many mundanes, one of the few others being Clary, and she was anything but. "And," Jace continued, "Because Hodge thought you might be dangerous, but if you are, you certainly don't know it."

"_I'm _dangerous?" _Hmm…_thought Jace. _I guess she really is just a mundane, unless…_ but his thought process was disrupted by the girl. "I saw you _kill_ someone last night!" she shouted, astonished. "I saw you drive a knife under his ribs and…" she shuddered delicately, recalling the events of last night.

Jace assumed that this was the proper reaction to the scene she had witnessed, but it was still strange to see it. Everyone else he interacted with knew exactly _why_ he had killed the demon, and in most cases how to do it themselves. "I may be a killer, but I know what I am. Can you say the same?"

"I'm an ordinary human being," she said with conviction. "Just like you said. Who's Hodge?"

"My tutor." Jace responded, amused, but he was his mind was whirring. The only humans that had the sight were the Nephilim and those who were the victims or seekers of black magic. Because she seemed to have no idea what the latter was, that left only one option. "And I wouldn't be so quick to brand myself as ordinary, if I were you. Let me see your right hand."

Jace leaned forward expectantly, reaching for it, but she pulled away. "My right hand? If I show you my hand, will you leave me alone?"

_No_. "Certainly."

She held out her hand cautiously. Jace took it gingerly in his own, and inspected it for the telltale Marks. "Nothing." He said, hearing the discontent in his own voice. "You're not left handed, are you?"

"No. Why?"

He was still grasping her hand. It was soft and unscarred compared to his own, and with a shrug he released it. "Most Shadowhunters get marked on their right hands – or left, if they're left handed like I am – when they're still young. It's a permanent rune that lends an extra skill with weapons."

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

"_The pain means it's working Jonathan." His father's voice was in his ear. He was six years old. Jace could still remember the nightmares it had given him. Horrifying nightmares for weeks on end, and every night his father would return to his bedside, carve the rune into his skin, where it always faded, and leave. It was a cycle that would continue until the rune remained. When it had, months later, his father had looked pleased, but the nightmares continued. _

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Jace held out his left hand, showcasing the rune. The girl looked at it blankly, and said, "I don't see anything." _Well you're right about one thing, at least. _Jace thought, not without a trace of bitterness.

"Let your mind relax. Wait for it to come to you, like waiting for something to rise to the surface of water."

"You're crazy." She said simply, but she stared intently at his hand, causing the feeling he had had in the coffee bar to rise up again. He still couldn't understand it.

Suddenly she blinked, and her eyebrows rose. "A tattoo?" she asked.

"I knew you could do it." Jace said, satisfied. "And it's not a tattoo, it's a Mark. They're runes, burned into our skin."

"They make you handle weapons better?" Her voice no longer questioned his sanity; it seemed that for now, at least, she found his story plausible.

"Different Marks do different things. Some are permanent but the majority vanish when they've been used."

"That's why your arms aren't all inked up today?"

"That's exactly why." Jace was pleased with her response, she was observant. He _had_ Marked himself before leaving, but his _iratze's _had been used and they were all he had bothered with in his haste to leave the Institute in search of the girl.

"I knew you had the sight, at least." He said. Now if only he could find a way to get her to come to the Institute without having to use rope and butterfly knots. "It's nearly full dark, we should go." He used this line with girls often, it usually worked. _Always_ worked actually; no exceptions.

"_We_? I thought you said you would leave me alone?"

Jace smirked, he had expected as much. Clary was constantly breaking tradition.

"I lied. Hodge said I have to bring you to the Institute with me. He wants to talk to you."

"Why would he want to talk to me?" _Because you're intriguing. Interesting. Beautiful, _he as he finished the thought, he realized why he disliked the Simon boy so much.

He was jealous.

Jace had never been the victim of jealousy before. He had used it to his advantage, and played along with it when necessary, but had never actually, _truly_ been jealous. He was jealous because Clary _was_ all the things he thought she was, and while the mundane knew her; Jace did not. He wanted to _know_ this girl. Not just know what she was, but truly get to know her. He had never wanted to know a girl besides Isabelle before, and even that sometimes was a challenge.

His mind reeled, but he was good at façades. "Because you now the truth now." Jace responded calmly. "There hasn't been a mundane who knew about us for at least a hundred years."

"About us? You mean people like _you._ People who believe in demons."

"People who kill them." He corrected her. He had succeeded in calming himself down slightly, and when he continued he was surer of himself. "We're called Shadowhunters. At least, that's what we call ourselves; the Downworlders have less complimentary names for us."

"Downworlders?"

"The Night Children. Warlocks. The Fey. The magical folk of this dimension." Well, the Night Children weren't strictly _magical_, they were more bloodsucking assholes than anything else, but he kept this to himself.

The girl shook her head. "Don't stop there," she said, her voice full of sarcastic solemnity. "I suppose there are also what? Vampires and werewolves and zombies?"

"Of course there are," Jace said, his tone mimicking the soberness in hers. "Although you mostly find zombies farther south, where the _voudon_ priests are."

"What about mummies?" She asked sardonically. "Do they only hang around Egypt?"

"Don't be ridiculous, no one believes in mummies."

"They don't?" and beyond the sarcasm there was real curiosity in her high, ringing voice.

"Of course not," Jace said more softly, "Look, Hodge will explain all this to you when you see him."

"What if I don't want to see him?" She asked, crossing her arms over her small frame.

"That's your problem, you can come either willingly or unwillingly."

"Are you threatening to _kidnap me_?"

"If you want to look at it that way, yes."

She looked about to say something – a string of profanities no doubt – when a discordant series of bells interrupted her.

"Go ahead and answer that if you like." Jace liberally, grinning.

His smile abruptly vanished when she answered the phone. "Mom?... It's alright mom. I'm fine. I'm on my way home…"

Clary's last statement was answered with a "_No!_" so petrified that it echoed through the alleyway. Jace's was by Clary's side in an instant, ear pressed against her's just in time to hear something shatter on the other line.

"_Mom!_ Mom are you all right?" Clary was screaming now.

"_Just promise me you won't come home. Go to Simon's and call Luke – tell him he's found me –_"

"Who's found you?" Clary said, her voice frantic. "Mom, did you call the police? Did you –" but she was cut short by a groaning, slithering sound, pierced through with the harsh thuds of a demon's tail hitting the floor.

"_I love you, Clary._"

The line went dead then, and Clary was shrieking in distress. She was rapidly dialing her mother's number, but Jace guessed she was probably debilitated by now, if not worse.

"Clary," he said, using the same tone one uses when speaking to a spooked horse, "What's going on?"

She ignored him, which frustrated Jace. She was calling her house again, but all that came through was static. She was trembling so violently by this point that her cell phone slipped out of her hand and into a puddle, a crack running through the screen.

She swore, frustrated, dropping to her knees to reclaim it, nearly sobbing.

Jace towed her to her feet, holding her wrist in a secure grasp. "Stop that. Has something happened?" He was just speaking to calm her down now; he had heard exactly what she had over the phone.

Abruptly she grabbed for his Sensor, her hand brushing his stomach in the process, sending a surprised thrill through him. He didn't move to get it back, opting only to say, "It's not a phone, it's a Sensor. You won't be able to use it."

"But I need to call the police!"

"Tell me what happened first." Jace said firmly, still gripping her wrist. "I can _help_ you."

She tried to yank away, but Jace held her arm tightly, willing her to understand that she _needed_ him.

Then, unexpectedly, she slapped him across the face, hard enough to leave searing marks where her nails had dug into his skin. He wrenched away in shock, releasing his grip on her, and she took the opportunity to dart from the alleyway.

But she was slower than Jace was. Much slower. He had scaled the wall of the alley in the next second with the help of a dumpster, and was jumping onto the roof of the nearest building before she had time to double-take. He jumped lightly from rooftop to rooftop, following Clary's path through fading evening light until she slowed, panting, in front of her house.

She walked cautiously up to the front door, stepping inside without a backward glance. _Maybe she really thinks it's that easy to shake me off, _Jace thought, chuckling. _Hardly. _

He jumped from the awning he had been resting on, sailing through the air until he landed nimbly on the cement across from her house. He swiftly crossed the street, and coming to a stop in front of her door, pulling on the doorknob. It was locked, so he reached for his stele to draw the _unlatch_ rune, but then noticed the symbols running up and down the doorframe. _Shit. _He thought. _It's warded._ No one but approved persons could get in through the front door.

_But I don't have to _use_ the front door. _He looked upwards and saw a window ledge, no more than two inches wide, jutting out directly above him. He launched himself into the air, and, grabbing hold of the windowsill, pulled himself to a standing position, balanced precariously on the outcrop. He was fiddling with the edge of the window, looking for a purchase in the frame that could be used to pry it open when a sudden high pitched scream rang through the apartment, muffled only slightly by the glass.

Clary. _That's Clary's voice._ Jace became utterly still, assessing the situation. She had no training, had only ever seen one demon before, and had just been ambushed in her own house. That did it for Jace. He drew an angel blade from his belt, smashing the hilt into the window pane. It struck sharply in the center, forming spidery cracks, but not breaking through. Jace swore under his breath, bringing the hilt down again. This time, the glass shattered, shards falling around him like glittering snowflakes. He leapt through the opening and ran flat out in the direction of the screaming through the nearly pitch black apartment, arriving at the threshold of a master bedroom. Once tastefully decorated, it was now destroyed. The bedsheets were torn to shreds, the place reeked of death and decay, and there was dark blood over every surface, even the ceiling. In the middle of the dark and revolting room was a Ravener demon, thrashing in agony. As Jace watched it began to collapse into itself, dying.

And lying several feet away, unconscious in a pool of her own blood, was Clary.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He knelt down next to her, checking for a pulse, feeling relieved when he found one. Scooping Clary up in his arms, he cradled her to his chest and carried her through the apartment, stopping only to kick the door shut behind him. He descended quickly through the foyer, bursting through the front door, and then sprinting with her until he was at the brick walled side of the brownstone. He set her down gently, in the soft grass of the garden, and inspected her for wounds, looking for what had knocked her unconscious. He found what he was looking for in a gash along the back of her neck, pulsating with dark fluid. Ravener poison.

Jace was confused. Usually Ravener poison was strong enough to kill someone immediately; that she wasn't dead meant that it had had to have been incapacitated before it struck her. _She killed it, _he realized. _No proper training, weapons, or knowledge, and she_ killed_ it. _

He tore off his shirt just as the first sirens began to sound. Tearing the fabric into strips, he saw the girl stir.

"Don't move." He ordered. He hoped his voice wasn't as frenzied as it sounded to his ears.

But of course Clary didn't listen, she turned her head to look at him and he saw that pain racked itself through her body. She stared at him, and tried to sit up, spasming. Why wouldn't she _listen_?

"I told you not to move!" Jace growled, exasperated. "That Ravener demon got you in the back of the neck. It was half-dead, so it wasn't much of a sting, but we have to get you to the Institute." _Or you'll die. And then I'll never know you_. "Hold still." He added as she tried to move again.

The spasms that had before been concentrated in her hands spread to her whole body, as she whispered, "That thing – the monster – it _talked_."

"You've heard a demon talk before," Jace reminded her, resisting the urge to ask her what it had said, knowing it would only upset her further. He dug a vial of _char_ paste from his belt and spread its contents onto one of the torn remnants of his t-shirt.

As he slipped the rag under her head and began to tie it expertly, she said, "The demon in Pandemonium – it looked like a person."

"It was an Eidolon demon. A shape changer. Raveners look how they look. Not very attractive, but they're too stupid to care." He found it odd; she was literally _dying _in front of him and he felt the need to give her a lesson in demonology.

"It said it was going to eat me." She said, trembling.

Finishing the knot, Jace sat back. "But it didn't." He said, and a bit of the disbelieving awe he had been feeling crept into his tone. "You killed it."

She sat up gingerly. "The police are here, we should-"

"There's nothing they can do." Jace said, cutting her off. "Somebody probably heard you screaming and reported it. Ten to one those aren't real police officers. Demons have a way of covering their tracks." Sure enough, as he caught a glimpse of the officers, he saw the claws and bony bodies of Du'sien demons, and was immediately happy that he had taken Clary out of the open.

"My mom." Clary said suddenly, gulping.

Jace knew from experience that he had to try to distract her from thoughts of her mother, she would panic otherwise. "There's Ravener poison coursing through your veins _right now_. You'll be dead in an hour if you don't come with me." He got swiftly to his feet and held out his hand to her. She took it, wobbling slightly as she pulled herself upright. "Come on."

She took a step forward, but then, alarmingly, fell forward. Jace caught her, slipping an arm around her waist as he asked, "Can you walk?"

"I think so." She said, peeking around the small opening in the bushes to the front of the house. Catching a glimpse of the police officers, she said, "Her hand-"

"I told you they might be demons. We have to get out of here. Can we go through the alley?"

She shook her head. "It's bricked up. There's no way-"

But her words were interrupted by a fit of coughing. She raised her hand to cover her mouth, and it came away gloved in blood. She whimpered.

Jace, swearing, grabbed for her wrist. He slid his stele out of his pocket and brought it to her arm, drawing the _mendelin_ on her quaking wrist. The black Mark stood stark against her pale skin, and Jace barely had time to question himself as he heard her say, "What's that supposed to do?"

"It'll hide you temporarily." _If you don't become a Forsaken that is._ "My stele." Jace said in response to her questioning look as he slid it back into is belt.

"Jace…" she murmured, and fainted. As he caught her agilely, swinging her up into his arms, Jace became conscious of the fact that this was the first time she had spoken his name, and it filled him with an unexpected emotion. _Happiness,_ he thought.

As Clary fell unconscious in his arms, he started to run. It seemed like years ago that he had been sitting in the coffee shop behind her, angry for what was then an unknown reason. He felt different about himself now, thanks to her; she made him feel _alive. Awake._

As he was running through dark, cobbled streets toward the Institute, his mind began to wander, and a Dante quote drifted to the forefront of his mind.

_Ricordati di stasera, pereche e linizio di sempre._

"Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

**There, I warned you it was long. Have you noticed that I'm slowly starting to get more random as these bold thingy parts continue? **

**Thank you for reading, comment and review pretty please with a cherry on top and pumpernickel nowhere in sight. Reviews make my day, positive or negative ****(suggestions as well). Thank you to everyone who wished me luck on exams and shared my pain, to people who explained assorted stuff to me, and to everyone who gave titles. More suggestions? Should I change it at all? At the end of the next chapter in this little bold faced blurb thing I'll post up some really good titles that were suggested.**

**This end-y thing is long enough now, so please review, and it's still weird to me that you're basically reading my brain (and you seem to like it), just so you know. I have absolutely no idea when I'll get used to that.**

**I love you guys (I mean it).**

**K**


	4. Awakening

**Disclaimer: Do you feel Cassandra Clare watching you? I thought so. And the Cheeto people too.**

**Warning: This chapter contains more adult themes than the young or weak hearted should probably read (not to worry though, you'll see). So if you're younger than around 12 and older than around 70, steer clear. **

**Lital, you wanted a shout out, so here you go **

**Awakening**

"What the _hell _happened?"

"_Jace_!"

The chorus of echoes followed Jace as he carried Clary through the thick muggy air and up the stone steps of the Institute. Alec and Isabelle had been waiting for him outside, and they stayed with him as he set Clary down on the soft carpet of the foyer floor. She had been jostled when he was running with her, and the wound at her neck was bleeding more freely now, covering the floor with ichor.

"Get Hodge." Jace said flatly.

"But Jace, you're covered in blood! What happened?"

"_Get Hodge!_" There was something in his voice then – panic. Isabelle scurried off to find Hodge, eyes wide.

"Jace," Alec said, voice pleading, "Tell me what happened. _Please_."

"Well let's see, I order of occurrence: the girl is a Shadowhunter, she killed a Ravener demon with her bare hands, and I ran with her bleeding, comatose body in my arms through the whole of Brooklyn. Oh, and the reason she's like this is because she wouldn't respond to my advances, so naturally I had to take a demon fang and spear her in the back of the head with it."

"No need to be sarcastic." Alec actually sounded a bit hurt, causing Jace to backpedal slightly.

"Alec," Jace said, the sarcasm in his voice replaced by mild patience. "I'm just tired. It's been a very long day. I'm sorry I snapped at you." And it _had_ been a long day, Jace realized. It had been only that morning he had had a stand off with a traitorous warlock. That seemed not only years ago, but as if it had happened to someone else.

"It's ok, Jace, you don't have to explain," Alec said, voice gentle. "Do you want to tell me, or would you rather just tell Hodge?"

_Crap, _Jace groaned inwardly. Hodge hadn't approved of letting the girl leave their sight, how would he respond to her almost _dying_? The sight of Clary lying at his feet filled him with a sense of anxiety as he said, "I'd rather tell Hodge, even if that seems like walking into the seventh level of Hell at this point."

At this point Hodge himself hurried into the room, letting out a startled gasp when he saw the girl.

"To the Infirmary Jace, and what in the Angel's name were you _thinking_?"

Jace complied, clutching Clary close to his chest as he rose and followed Hodge from where he had stalked out of the room. The corridors of the Institute were cold as always, turning the cool sweat on the nape of Jace's neck to icy pinpricks. Having reached the infirmary, Jace stepped through the door, setting Clary on the bed nearest the door. Blood from her wound dripped slowly over Jace, covering his gear in fat, dark droplets.

Hodge came into the room then, bearing a tray of assorted steaming mixtures, gauze, and latex gloves. He set to work, Madame Fox assisting him, and after a few minutes of work on the girl seemed to realize he had an audience. Jace, Isabelle, and Alec were all standing in the sick room, watching intently.

"Get out." He said.

Isabelle looked to Jace to be insulted. "But you've never made us leave before! We _always_ get to watch!" she whined.

"This girl is not family. Her clothes need to be torn off, they're covered in ichor. They are burning her skin. Get _out._"

"I for one," Jace drawled, "Agree with Isabelle. This may be a _crucial_ point in our learning curriculum."

"You're a sick male Jace Wayland." Isabelle said, her voice tinged with amusement.

"Children," Hodge said, exasperated, "I need to help this girl. Please leave! And Jace, stay near – this day was fairly exciting; it has to go on record."

The moment they had all left the infirmary Isabelle and Alec stared at Jace. The stares made him uncomfortable, it was if they were seeing not their brother, but someone else entirely.

"I ask yet again," said Isabelle, "What the _hell_ happened? And what are you going to tell Hodge?"

"I'm going to tell Hodge what happened, what else?" Jace said. "But I'm not going to tell him anything for as long as possible. Tonight I'm going out."

"But he told you to stay near," Alec said.

"The Pink Flamingo is only three blocks away. That's near. You want to join me Alec?"

"Uh, well… um, I'm – I'm not sure…I mean, I'm really tired, and everything-"

"Say no more, I realize cheap entertainment is beyond you dear brother. I realize grimly that you would never stoop to my level, and understand that beyond acceptance of that fact is the acceptance of myself. Iz, you in?"

"You're disgusting Jace," was all he got in response.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The Pink Flamingo on a weekday night was disgusting as usual, but Jace was in no mood to be picky. He approached the pedestal where the scantily clad hostess stood, watching as she broke off from a conversation with a middle-aged warlock and turned towards him, smiling vibrantly.

"Jacey!" she called brightly, her bubble-gum tone piercing through the haze that had overcome him since leaving the Institute.

"Bebe!" Jace called back, "How's business?"

"Better with you here baby." She winked suggestively. "The usual?"

"You know me well gorgeous."

The music in the club was blaring from an unknown source, seeming to heighten Jace's senses as he waded his way through the dark room's sets of filthy tables after the hostess. The space was thickly veiled in some areas with dark cigarette smoke, and jeers echoed off of the raised stage in the center of the room as he skirted drunks and perverts all around. As she led him to a table in the back of the room, she pointed towards a low coffee colored couch, ordering, "Sit, I'll have a whiskey and basket of fries here in two shakes."

The food in question arrived seconds after she had left, and Jace dug in, ravenous. He hadn't eaten anything besides Isabelle's "oatmeal" that morning, and he had only scarfed down three bites of the disgusting concoction to spare Izzy's feelings. Jace sat back to watch the show, wanting nothing more than to get drunk and forget the days events.

Jace turned his attention towards the stage, but was disappointed. His gaze wasn't held rapt by the women on top of it tonight, as it usually was. All manner of dancer was present, from vampires to werewolves and witches, all showing off their meagerly dressed bodies, gyrating to the rhythm of the bass on poles rooted to the floor of the stage. Jace was wrapped up in his own thoughts, thinking through the haze of images that flashed through his mind; Clary, looking at him with a martyred expression in Pandemonium; Clary, shouting at him in the alleyway outside of the poetry club; Clary, lying bleeding on the floor of the Institute.

Jace pushed this last thought away with a grimace as a showgirl approached him, sauntering over from her place on the side of the stage. She drew near him, leaning down towards his ear as she whispered, "Come with me."

She left through a beaded doorway in the side of the room, disappearing through the cloud of smoke in her midst. Jace followed fluidly after her, feeling none of the usual anticipation. He found the showgirl shortly thereafter, leaning against a grimy wall near one of the backrooms. She smiled sultrily at him, showing teeth.

"My first condition," Jace intoned, leaning close to her, "is that you tell me what you are. I've had bad experiences in the past you see, one in particular involving a midget and a banana scarred me permanently."

She laughed. She was pretty, Jace realized, as she responded, "A werewolf," she said, grinning, "And this is free of charge." She leaned forward, pressing her lips to his. He responded automatically, drawing her against him as she pulled hum through the nearest doorway and fell onto the dingy bed. She pulled off his shirt first, and then her own, keeping her lips in close contact with his skin. Yet even as she moved her mouth up and down his bare chest, something inside of him could not help but think _this is wrong. Absolutely, completely _wrong. Jace ignored the voice urging him to stop, and in retaliation brought the girl even closer to him, kissing her more deeply. She sighed, and her breath washed over his face, hot and moist. She downward, away from his mouth, and he couldn't take it anymore.

"Stop." He said, but she continued, unbuttoning his pants. "I said stop." Jace took her by the shoulders and lifted her off of himself, setting her on the bed. "And put your bra back on," Jace said, taking the article in question off the floor and handing it to her.

The werewolf girl looked at him with an expression that was both irritated and awestruck at the same time. "What's wrong?" she asked, clasping her lingerie.

"I'm just not in the mood, I'm sorry."

"I forgive you, maybe just because you're the best kisser I've encountered in my entire life," she said, somewhat breathless, "But I at least deserve an explanation for why you got my hopes up."

"I'm just… thinking about other things. I'm sorry."

"Ah, so you have a girlfriend."

"No."

She looked offended now, as if she couldn't form one good reason as to why he didn't want to have sex with her. "Then _why_?" But seeing the pained expression on his face, she seemed to reconsider. She was thoughtful as she said, "But there _is_ someone else, isn't there? I can see it in your eyes."

"There's no one else. I'm just not in the mood."

"You're lying."

"What?" Jace said surprised. He hadn't expected a rebuff. "I'm not lying."

"Yes you are," the girl said unapologetically, "I can tell. You're either lying to me or lying to yourself. You pick." And with that she flounced out of the room.

Jace sat there for several moments, unmoving and unthinking. Her words rang in his ears like static; _you're either lying to me or lying to yourself._ But he wasn't lying to her, not really; he _wasn't _in the mood anymore. Could that really only leave one option? He thought of looking at himself in the mirror that morning, seeing the change in his eyes. He hadn't thought it was perceptible, but the werewolf girl had detected it. He really was changing, and the thought frightened him. He had been lying dormant for a long time, he knew, but Jace had had always assumed that it was permanent. That he couldn't change anymore than he already had. Jace had always thrown himself into the most dangerous situations, thinking that he had nothing to lose.

But now he did.

Jace realized it now, with perfect clarity.

He had feelings for the mundane girl, for Clary. It made sense, she had captivated him from the moment he had set eyes on her, running through his head; making herself impossible to forget. And then he had asked to go to find her alone, simply so he could be with her alone. Moreover, the sense of unexpectedness he had grown used to in Clary's presence was his perspective changing.

Unraveling his own thoughts was disconcerting, but at the same time it was a relief. Jace rose swiftly from the discolored bed, moving out of the dark room and into the club beyond. He spotted the werewolf girl, taunting a warlock in the corner. She spotted him, making eye contact as Jace mouthed, _Thank You._ She smiled, and then returned her attention towards her latest conquest.

Jace made his way through the dirty club and into the humid evening air outside. He felt different. Not in the strange way he had lately, but more like he had grown a foot overnight and had finally learned how to move. He knew himself again.

Jace walked to the Institute in the dark, earning stares from bystanders, and he realized he was still shirtless. _Well, might as well flaunt it, _Jace thought. He knew glamour protected his Marks, and those who could see them would ignore him anyways, so he strode down Broadway, moonlight glinting off his uncovered chest. He winked at tourists, strode past hot dog stands, and smiled innocently at everyone. Jace felt like himself again, confident and arrogant and proud of both. It felt good.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

He had never needed to talk to anyone before, about anything, so, lying in his room early the next morning it took Jace an extensive amount of time to decide if he should talk to Alec or not.

He eventually decided for it. _What do I have to lose?_

Jace rapped lightly on Alec's door, hoping his friend was up. He needn't have worried – a muffled groan came from behind the door, and Alec opened the door in his flannel pajama bottoms, his chest bare.

"I am _not_ helping you clean up your vomit again Jacey dear."

Jace laughed, "I'm not even hung over Al, have some faith."

Alec looked at him suspiciously. "What do you mean you're not hung over? You're _always_ hung over after you go to the Pink Flamingo. Well, hungover or otherwise inclined that is. And don't call me Al." A certain amount of resentment had crept into Alec's tone at this point.

"Well, Al," Jace said, grinning, 'If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse if that is brag for humanity rather than myself.' "

"Don't quote Thoreau to me." Alec said, aggravated.

"I just wanted to talk, actually."

"No really. Why did you wake me up?"

"I told you. I want to talk."

"You _never_ want to talk, no exceptions." Alec said skeptically, but he stepped aside and allowed Jace into the bedroom. The walls were familiarly covered in their dark brown wallpaper, and the room smelled of Alec; of soap and leather and cheetoes. Jace moved to the edge of the mattress and sat, saying, "Alec, I think I have feelings for someone."

Alec's eyes flew open, and he gave a startled gasp. "But-but...I suppose… Wait," he said, eyes narrowed, "Who is it?"

"Clary."

A pained expression came to Alec's face, though as to why Jace couldn't imagine. "The _mundane_. You. Have a crush. On a _mundane_?" Ah, so Alec was worried for him, was worried that he had made an error in judgment.

"She's not a mundane Alec, she's Nephilim. I put a glamour on her."

Alec let out a strangled sort of half-groan. "But I always thought- wait you did a _glamour_ on her? You could have turned her Forsaken!"

Jace grinned wickedly. "I know."

"You know what?" Alec said, "Get out."

"What?"

"I said _get out_ Jace Wayland." Alec snapped, pushing Jace towards the threshold. "Get out of my room; your total lack of respect for other people _abhors _me." And he slammed the door in Jace's face.

_This is why I keep everything bottled up inside, _Jace thought. _Because when you try to talk to people, they act like you just tried to get them to unknowingly eat a moldy hot dog. Is it like this for everybody? _

Jace decided to try Isabelle's room next, for lack of a better option. When he got to her room, however, he found it empty; Isabelle had no doubt slipped away to one of her night jaunts with the fairies in Central Park and hadn't returned yet. The only person left to try was Hodge, and that wasn't happening. He would do more than set upon Jace with questions about yesterday; if Jace asked him anything about women Hodge would probably direct him to a bookshelf, claiming the answer to be hidden in an ancient tome.

_There is one person who will listen._ And with that thought, Jace was setting off towards the infirmary. He was trepidatious; he wanted Clary to be well with a desire so prominent it frightened him.

But the passageways of the old church seemed inviting when Jace gently eased the door open, sliding it shut behind him with a faint _click_. He almost didn't dare look for her bed, but forced a glance in her direction after a moment of internal conflict.

Clary was still unconscious, lying in bed with a peaceful expression. Her hair fanned around her in a trail of coppery thread, and her mouth was open, her lips forming a soft "O" as she breathed quietly in and out.

Jace's heart leapt at the sight of her, then fell sharply. She was unconscious. She was unconscious because of him, because he hadn't gotten there in time. Guilt weighed down on him like an iron chain, holding him to the floor. And with the guilt came dawning realization. _When she wakes up, _if _she wakes up,_ Jace thought bitterly, _she won't have any idea how I feel about her. How does this _work? He would have to get her to feel for him _back, _he thought. _No matter how I've changed in the last few days, it's completely irrelevant if it's unrequited._ _She has no idea._

"Clary?" Jace whispered. "Clary I'm sorry." He sat gently on the edge of the bed, taking her hand in his own. It was cold and frail, and so Jace held it tighter, as if his touch could restore her warmth. Slowly Jace reached out his other hand and touched the back of her head, lifting it to reveal the bandage bound tightly to her neck. Inhaling sharply Jace averted his eyes, lowering her head back down to the pillow, but cupping her face lightly. She stirred at his touch, and Jace abruptly retracted his hand, waiting with baited breath until she was still. "Clary I'm so sorry I was late." He sighed.

She said something then – just a murmur in her induced sleep – but it sent Jace's heart soaring.

It was his name.

"Jace." She whispered again. He stared at her for several moments until she fell silent, heart pounding. _Why would she have said my name? Unless… she's thinking of me right now, just as I think of her – all the time. _He smiled, and it was a true smile, devoid of any sarcasm or bitterness.

Jace sat there in the dawn light of the infirmary, grinning with her hand in his for an immeasurable amount of time. It could have been hours or days, but when he finally released his grip on her and moved toward the door the light filtering in through the windows was stronger, the light of mid-morning, and he could faintly hear Isabelle screaming at Alec from the kitchen.

"Goodbye, Clary, I'll see you soon."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

When Jace got to the kitchen moments later Isabelle was threatening Alec, waving a dagger at his throat.

"You can't take it to heart, he had no idea-" She broke off as Jace entered the room, stared pointedly from boy to boy, then turned to a cutting board with a huff, grabbing a nearby apple and starting to viciously hack at it with her dagger.

"Morning guys."

"Morning Jace." trilled Isabelle. Alec turned his head studiously in the other direction.

"Still not speaking to me for no reason?"

"I have a reason."

"Oh? And what would that be?"

"None of your business."

"Iz. Talk some sense into your brother."

Isabelle looked disapprovingly at him. "I'm not getting involved."

"You seemed plenty involved before I walked in," Jace said, raising an eyebrow.

Isabelle narrowed her eyes. "I was simply sating some facts to Alec, which, incidentally, is all I could do now. So forget it. I've already tried to make one argument."

"Then I'm leaving." said Jace. "One person angry at me is enough. Plus now I don't have to see you torture apples into something you claim is edible."

"Fuck you, Jace."

"Give me a time and place, I'll be there." And with a wink, he left.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Managing to duck Hodge, Jace visited Clary in the infirmary that night, and again the next morning. He always did it in secret, for reasons he couldn't explain to himself. Maybe he felt vulnerable; he didn't know. Both times when he went, he would sit of the edge of the bed, sometimes holding her hand, sometimes humming under his breath. Both times he checked her wound, and both times she murmured his name. Always his heart would at first soar, then falter, wondering if she was dreaming or having nightmares.

He went in the afternoon the day after his spat with Alec to visit her again, but heard voices from inside. He dropped to a crouch behind the door, listening intently.

"Is there anything Jace _didn't _tell you?" Isabelle's sarcasm was plain.

A slight cough. "This is the Institute right?" came a feeble voice that was undeniably Clary's. She's _awake_! Jace thought.

"Yes, this is the Infirmary," Isabelle said dryly, "Not that you haven't figured that out already."

A sudden gasp, then Isabelle's worried tone, "Are you okay?"

"My stomach," Clary moaned.

"Oh, I almost forgot, Hodge said to give you this when you woke up. You haven't eaten anything in three days, that's probably why you feel sick.

A light slurping noise. "What is this?"

"One of Hodge's tisanes, they always work. I'm Isabelle Lightwood by the way, I live here."

"I know your name." That's right, she was observant, Jace recalled. "I'm Clary, Clary Fray." she said. "Did Jace bring me here?"

A slight thrill went through him as he heard her say his name. She was conscious now, it counted for more.

"Hodge was furious. You got ichor and blood all over the carpet in the entryway. If he'd done it while my parents were here, he'd have gotten grounded for sure." Jace chuckled at what he imagined the expression on Maryse's face would have been.

A pause. "Jace said you killed that Ravener demon all by yourself." So Alec had shared his meager knowledge.

"I guess I did." She said timidly.

"But you're a _mundie._"

"Amazing isn't it?" At that Jace snickered so loudly that he had to back away from the door. He headed for the corridor and made a bee-line for the music room, and in stepping over the threshold, the smell of polished wood and brass greeted him like an old friend. He had always felt safe in the music room. His father had taught him to play the piano at a young age, and Jace had dabbled in composing ever since. He sat on the black, polished bench and set his hands upon the keys, remembering. The memories were new and old; his father showing him how to curve his hands around an apple for the proper hand positioning; Jace playing himself his first composed song, at age eight; Clary shouting at him in the alley; her face when she had whispered his name the night before. With these memories in hand, he began to play, creating a complex tune – inspired by Clary.

He had been playing for some time when he heard someone enter the room, quiet as a whisper. "Alec?" He said, hoping he had come to make amends. "Is that you?"

"It's not Alec." The voice said. "It's me, Clary." She stepped further into the room, and he saw her clearly. The wound at her neck was fully healed, the bandages removed, and she was fully alert; _healthy. _Jace's heart swelled, he hadn't done any lasting damage. She was fine. But at the same time he looked at her and felt undeniable joy, in the back of his mind he felt despair.

_She has no idea. _

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

**There, I hope you liked it, it took me long enough to write. Next chapter will go up soon. Reviews make me happy, no matter what's in them. You guys all rock, I got quite a lot of feedback after the last chapter, and it helped with this one a lot. **

**Good night Wisconsin! (Bonus points to anyone who knows where that's from **** )**

**Love, Kathy**


	5. Dispute

**Disclaimer: Anything that should be destroyed by Cassandra Clare will be. **

**To everyone who PMed me asking "where's the next chapter?" (and there were quite a number) get your panties/boxers out of the twist they've been knotted into and enjoy, or don't, I really don't care (although I will repeat thank you from the bottom of my heart, I love PMs):**

**Dispute**

"Our own Sleeping Beauty." _Beauty being an understatement_, Jace thought_. _"Who finally kissed you awake?"

She blushed, a bright red tingeing her cheeks. "Nobody, I woke up on my own."

"Was there anyone with you?" was Alec or Hodge in there with Isabelle? He couldn't seem to think straight with her staring at him as she was now, like she was appraising him.

"Isabelle, but she went off to get someone – Hodge I think. She told me to wait but-"

Jace smirked. "I should have warned her about your habit of never doing what you're told. Are those Isabelle's clothes? They look ridiculous on you." The clothes were at least twice as large as Clary was, and they hid all of her delicate curves.

"I could point out that you _burned _all of my clothes."

"It was purely precautionary," Jace said. This was true, he had taken her soiled outfit from the floor of the infirmary after the first night he'd visited her in and taken it outside, appraising it for several moments before had sighed and threw them into the nearest trash can with a match.

Jace rose, pulling the piano cover back, and led Clary from the room. "Come on, I'll take you to Hodge.

He led her from the small room, the daylight fading to dim lamplight in the Institute's corridors. As Jace escorted Clary to the library – for that's where Hodge would undoubtedly be – he kept his eyes on her face. She seemed to be drinking in the sights of the new world she had been thrown into so abruptly; occasionally her breath would catch, and she would open her mouth as if to say something, only to be quickly transfixed by something else. Jace had to give her credit, even looking upon the walls of the Institute, adorned with motifs and tapestries strange to her eyes, she did not panic, only gazed in wonder. Eventually she spoke. "Why does this place have so many bedrooms?" she asked, her voice muted, "I thought it was a research institute."

"This is the residential wing." Jace replied, looking around. "We're pledged to offer safety and lodging to any Shadowhunter who requests it. We can house up to two hundred people here." _Though none of our guests has been as interesting as you, believe me._

"But most of these rooms are empty," she said, a crease forming on her brow.

"People come and go. Usually it's just us – Alec, Isabelle, Max, their parents – and me and Hodge."

"Max?"

"You met the beauteous Isabelle?" he asked, and was rewarded with a darkening of her expression. Jace smirked, "Alec is her elder brother. Max is the youngest, but he's overseas with his parents."

"On vacation?"

"Not exactly." Jace wasn't sure if he should explain to Clary about Idris as of yet. Too much information, he had been warned before (by many different people) was a costly thing to give to someone, especially when they had just discovered something new. How many times had he been beaten by his father or slapped senseless by girls for telling them something they apparently hadn't needed to know? Jace hesitated, "You can think of them as…" as what? On vacation? Exiled? _That_ of all things he should probably refrain from mentioning. "As foreign diplomats, and this as an embassy of sorts. Right now they're in the Shadowhunter home country, working out some very delicate peace negotiations. They brought Max with them since he's young." Jace had to think through his response, working out whether he had given her what Isabelle would have undoubtedly called "TMI". _Nope, safe for now. _

Clary looked up at him, appearing completely lost. "A Shadowhunter home country? What's it called?"

"Idris."

"I've never heard of it."

Jace smirked again, more broadly this time. "You wouldn't have. Mundanes don't know about it. There are wardings – protective barriers-" he added, remembering how clueless she was, be it to a fault of her own or not. "-up all over the borders. If you tried to cross into Idris, you'd simply find yourself transported from one boarder to the next. You'd never know what happened."

"So it's not on any maps?"

"Not mundie ones. For our purposes you can consider it a small country between Germany and France."

"But there isn't anything between Germany and France. Except Switzerland."

"Precisely." Jace grinned, mundies had extraordinary methods of denying reality.

"So you've been there? To Idris I mean."

Jace's smile abruptly vanished, replaced by calculated detachment. "I grew up there." No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't keep the edge of coldness from his voice. He tried to quash the dark feeling that had risen inside him, and adopted a tone of careful aloofness before continuing. "Most of us do. There are, of course, Shadowhunters all over the world. We have to be everywhere, because demonic activity is everywhere. But to a Shadowhunter, Idris is always 'home.' " He unintentionally caressed the last word, willing what he had said to be true.

"Like Mecca or Jerusalem." Clary said, her head tilted to the side. "So most of you are brought up there, and then when you grow up-"

Jace cut her off, "We're sent where we're needed." No need to tell her that a great many of them _didn't _grow up. "And there are a few," Jace continued, "Like Isabelle and Alec, that grow up away from their home country, because that's where their parents are. With all the resources of the Institute here, with Hodge's training…" Jace trailed off, they had arrived at the library. "Hey Church." He said, bending down to nuzzle the Persian's ears.

"Wait," Clary said. "Alec and Isabelle and Max, they're the only Shadowhunters your age that you know – that you spend time with?" She seemed a good deal concerned about this, as if Jace could benefit from the presence of other people. He kept a blank expression as he said, "Yes."

"That must get kind of lonely."

Jace just shrugged, "I have everything I need." Not strictly true of course, there was Clary, but that went well beyond too much information. That went into stalker territory, and as he actually_ had_ stalked her… well, best not to mention it. He shouldered the library doors open, holding them for her as she hesitated on the threshold. The smell of books and wood polish assaulted Jace as she brushed passed him, stepping into the large, circular space. Her eyes went wide, her mouth falling slightly open as she gazed around. Despite himself, Jace felt a grin spread across his face. She just looked so _happy. _

Catching sight of the look on her face, Hodge smiled briefly, his birdlike features twitching only slightly. "A book lover I see." He said. He raised an eyebrow in Jace's direction, "You didn't tell me that Jace."

Jace smirked, moving to stand somewhat protectively behind Clary, he knew that Hodge tended to be a bit cold. "We haven't done much talking in our short acquaintance. I'm afraid our reading habits didn't come up."

Clary turned around and shot him a glare at the innuendo, and Jace smirked again as she said, "How can you tell? That I like books, I mean?" She said this slowly, as if to calm herself.

"From the look on your face when you walked in," said Hodge. "Somehow I doubted that you were that impressed by _me_." Hodge rose, his sharp eyed raven, Hugo, attached to his shoulder. Jace suppressed a shudder, Hugo had always seemed cold somehow, evil. The girl noticed the bird as well, stepping back slightly once she noticed it.

Hodge favored her with a slightly humored expression. "This is Hugo," he explained, stroking the bird. "Hugo is a raven, and as such, knows many things. I, meanwhile, am Hodge Starkweather, a professor of history, and, as such, I do not know nearly enough."

Clary laughed lightly, as if she could relate, and stepped forward to shake his outstretched hand. "Clary Fray," she said in her ringing voice.

Hodge nodded thoughtfully. "Honored to make your acquaintance," he said. "I would be honored to make the acquaintance of anyone who could kill a Ravener with her bare hands."

Jace smiled as Clary looked to her feet, mumbling, "It wasn't my bare hands. It was Jace's, well I don't remember what it was called, but-"

"She means my Sensor," Jace cut in, remembering that she had never given it back. Everything clicked into place then, how she could have come through that escapade alive and mostly intact. "She shoved it down the thing's throat, the runes must have choked it." He grinned, excited at the disclosure. Then, _crap,_ "I guess I'll need another one. I should have mentioned that." _When exactly would you have mentioned that? _Said Jace's dark side. _When you were avoiding Hodge, or when you were sneaking around to see the girl?_

"There are several extra in the weapons room," said Hodge, thankfully cutting off his inner monologue. Hodge offered a quick smile to Clary, "That was quick thinking," he said. "What gave you the idea of using the Sensor as a weapon?"

She was about to open her mouth in response but was cut off by a sharp, familiar, barking laugh. Alec was slouched over a maroon armchair in the corner of the library. He set down the tome he had been examining, and appraised Clary with a look of pure, unadulterated hatred. What the hell had gotten into him? Clary started and glanced towards Alec, raising her eyebrows condescendingly at him.

Jace snorted just as Hodge said, "I'm not quite sure what you mean Alec," lifting an eyebrow. "Are you suggesting that she didn't kill that demon after all?" He didn't sound even remotely surprised at Alec's response, and Jace had to admit that he wasn't either. Alec had always been a bit on the pigheaded side, but in a different way even than Jace. Alec was egocentric about his ancestry, not his physical appearance, which, Jace noted, was shabbier and paler than usual.

Even looking as ragged as he did, Alec still managed to sound proud. "Of course she didn't," he sniffed, thrusting his nose slightly higher into the air. "Look at her – she's a _mundie _Hodge, a little kid at that. There's no way she took on a Ravener."

Clary cut him off, seething. She cocked her head threateningly to the side as she appraised Alec, saying, "I'm not a little kid, I'm sixteen years old – well I will be on Sunday." Jace was surprised to find that she didn't sound childish now. Her voice wasn't rising with her temper; she seemed eerily calm.

Hodge appeared impressed by the girl's frostiness. He inclined his head slightly, "The same age as Isabelle," he pointed out. "Would you call her a child?" Jace suppressed a smirk, no one on the island of Manhattan would ever dare call Isabelle a child.

"Isabelle hails from one of the greatest Shadowhunter dynasties in history." Yep, definitely egocentric, thought Jace. "This girl, on the other hand, hails from _New Jersey._"

"I'm from _Brooklyn_!" Clary screeched, appearing morally offended. "And so what?" She continued, her cool façade crumbling as she glared at Alec. "I just killed a demon in my own house, and you're going to be a _dickhead_ about it because I'm not some spoiled rotten rich kid like you or your sister!" Jace couldn't help himself, he burst out laughing.

Alec seemed at a loss for words. "_What_ did you call me?"

Clary opened her mouth as if to clarify even further, but Jace cut her off. "She has a point Alec," he chortled. "It's those bridge and tunnel demons you really have to watch out for."

"It's not _funny _Jace!" Alec made to rise from his chair, fury rolling off of him in waves. "Are you just going to let her stand there and call me names?"

_Like I would do anything about it if I could,_ Jace thought. "Yes. It'll do you good. Think of it as endurance training."

Alec stared at Jace, looking as if he were trying to calm himself down. "We may be _parabatai,_" Alec said eventually, fixing Jace with a supremist glare, "But you're flippancy is wearing on my patience."

Jace narrowed his eyes, he would _not_ be spoken to like a small child, particularly not by Alec, who had the courage of a walnut half the time. When Jace spoke, his voice was distinctly colder. "And you're obstinacy is wearing on mine," he said, his voice icy. "When I found her, she was lying on the floor in a pool of blood with a dying demon practically on top of her. I watched as it vanished." Jace almost shuddered, thinking of the decrepit bedroom he had walked into, thinking of Clary lying on the floor, stark white against her own pool of scarlet blood. "If she didn't kill it, who did?"

Both Alec and Hodge looked slightly shocked at this, and Jace remembered that he hadn't old anyone the story, apart from the bits and pieces that he'd let slip to Alec. He'd been too busy worrying bout the girl. Alec pursed his lips, surprise replacing anger as the main emotion on his face. "Raveners are stupid," he argued. "Maybe it got itself in the neck with it's singer, it's happened before."

"Now you're suggesting it committed suicide?" Jace asked blandly.

Alec's mouth went even whiter than it had been before. "It isn't right for her to be here," he growled, abandoning the argument. "Mundies aren't allowed in the Institute, and there are good reasons for that! If anyone knew about this, we'd be reported to the Clave." Jace clenched his teeth, fighting the urge to hit Alec square in the jaw.

"That's not entirely true," Hodge said, interceding. "The Law does allow us to offer sanctuary to mundanes in certain circumstances. A Ravener has already attacked Clary's mother, she could well have been next." Jace glanced at Clary, who had suddenly gone very pale. An unfamiliar urge rose inside him – the urge to put his arm around her and tell her it was all right. He didn't. In his experience, things were rarely all right.

Hugo cawed sharply, just as Alec said, "Raveners are search and destroy machines. They act under orders from warlocks or powerful demon lords. Now what interest would a warlock or demon lord have in an ordinary mundane household? Any thoughts?" He gazed at Clary, eyes hard and beseeching.

Clary glared back at Alec, her gaze equal in strength, if not hate. "It must have been a mistake," she shot back.

"Demons don't make those kinds of mistakes." Alec said. "If they went after your mother, they must have had a reason. If she had been innocent –"

The girl narrowed her eyes, and her voice took on the same chill as before when she said quietly, "What do you mean innocent?"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Alec's eyes widened slightly. "I –"

"What he means," Hodge interrupted, "Is that it is extremely unusual for a powerful demon-the kind that might command a host of lesser demons-to interest himself in the affairs of human beings. No mundane may summon a demon, they lack that power, but there have been some, desperate and foolish, who have found a witch or warlock to do it for them."

"My mother doesn't know any warlocks. She doesn't believe in magic." She said this flatly, but a thought seemed to come to her suddenly. "Madame Dorothea," she said, "She lives downstairs, she's a witch. Maybe the demons after her and got my mom by mistake."

Jace doubted this, demons hardly came knocking on the wrong apartment door. "She's a hedge witch – a fake," Jace said quickly. "There's no reason for a warlock to be interested in her unless he's in the market for non-functioning crystal balls." He hadn't looked _closely _into the matter, mind, but it hardly mattered.

Hodge sighed. "Well then we're back where we began. It seems the time has come to notify the Clave."

"NO!" Jace cried, Clary would be taken away then, her memory erased if they couldn't find good use for her. "We can't –"

"It made sense to keep Clary's presence a secret when we weren't sure she would recover," Hodge said, and Jace thought he saw Cary shudder slightly. "But now she has, and she is the first mundane to pass through the doors of the Institute in over a hundred years. You know the rules about mundane knowledge of Shadowhunters, Jace," he continued, giving Jace a hard look. "The Clave must be informed."

"Absolutely!" Alec said, not even attempting to hide his glee at the prospect of the girl being shipped off to Raziel knows where. Alec was still chattering as Jace quickly racked his brain, searching for something, anything, that would keep the girl at the Institute, where she would be near him, and away from the prying, dangerous eyes of the Covenant and Silent Brothers. After several moments of thinking, he found it, the fact that would trump every argument. His heart leapt, and he spoke-quietly to hide the excitement that overtook him.

"She's not a mundane."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Alec's jabbering cut off instantly, and the look of shock on Hodge's face was priceless. Clary, too, looked bewildered. "But I am," she said.

"No," Jace said, still quietly. "You aren't." As he looked her in the eyes a nervous twang shot through him. He realized that she may not _want_ to stay here, for all the trouble he was putting into this, and that she may still leave of her own accord. Anxiety flowed through him and he gulped, averting his eyes and turning quickly to face Hodge.

"That night," Jace began, "There were Du'sien demons, dressed like police officers. We had to get past them. Clary was too weak to run, and there wasn't time to hide. She would have died, so I used my stele – put a _mendelin _rune on the inside of her arm. I thought-"

Jace broke of as Hodge started to go purple."Are you _out of your MIND_?" Hodge roared, pounding his hand against his desk so hard that the angels supporting it quivered as if in pain. "You know what the Law says about placing Marks on Mundanes! You – You of all people should know better!"

Jace was less afraid of Hodge than he was at the prospect of the girl leaving, so he was calm when he answered. "But it worked. Clary, show them your arm."

Clary, who had been watching Hodge with a frightened expression, shot Jace a perplexed look and held out her arm in Hodge's direction. This had the intended effect, Hodge and Alec both gasped quietly as they looked upon the faded scar adorning her wrist. "See, it's almost gone," Jace said, grinning. "It didn't hurt her at all."

Hodge had recovered from the initial shock and seemed to have returned to his fiery rage once more. "That's not the_ point_." He said, apparently trying to control his temper and failing. "You could have turned her into a Forsaken."

"I can't _believe_ you Jace!" Alec thundered, his face flushed with anger. "Only Shadowhunters can receive Covenant Marks. They _kill_ mundanes!" _Yeah, Alec, I remember now, we had this conversation two days ago, right before you called me an heartless asshole. _

Jace's own temper flared. "She's _not_ a mundane! Haven't you been listening? It explains why she could see us. She must have Clave blood." He spoke to Hodge, avoiding Alec's narrowed gaze.

Abruptly Clary lowered her arm, her face paling. "But I don't – I _couldn't_," she whispered.

"You must," Jace said. "If you didn't, that Mark I made on your arm-"

"That's enough Jace." Hodge interrupted him. "There's no need to frighten her further."

But Jace was impatient, ignoring Hodge's warning. "But I was right, wasn't I?" Jace said excitedly. "It explains what happened to her mother too. If she was Shadowhunter in exile, she might well have Downworld enemies."

The girl looked taken aback. "But my mother wasn't a Shadowhunter!"

"Your father then," Jace said, looking for alternatives. "What about him?"

"He died." Clary said flatly. "Before I was born."

Jace flinched very slightly. So this girl knew pain. AT least she wouldn't mourn a man she never knew. But now her mother had probably been killed as well. Where would she go now? It was sick, Jace knew, but he found himself hoping that she would be forced to stay here, for lack of another alternative.

Alec spoke then, uncertainty plain in his tone. "It's possible, if her father were a Shadowhunter and her mother a mundane, well, we all know it's against the Law to marry a mundie… Maybe they were in hiding."

"My mother would have told me," Clary said, but with a doubtful expression.

"Not necessarily," Jace said. "We all have secrets." Jace was thinking of his secret visits, reminiscing.

Clary stared at him knowingly for a moment, then turned to Hodge. "Luke," she said, her tone more forceful. "Our friend. He would know. It's been three days, he must be frantic – can I call him? Is there a phone?" She turned back to Jace, pleading. "Please?"

Jace looked to Hodge, who moved reluctantly towards his desk. He pointed out the phone to her, and after a few failed attempts, she managed to successfully dial the right number. She held the phone to her ear, waiting, until, "Luke! It's me, Clary." She seemed to be almost weeping with relief. _Crap_, thought Jace, _she'll probably go to stay with this Luke. Wonder who he is? Friend? Boyfriend? Hopefully he's more attractive than rat-boy Simon at the very least. _He moved to lean against an armchair as she continued.

"I'm fine…" She said into the phone. "I'm sorry I didn't call you before…Luke, my mom-… Then you haven't heard from her." Her face fell, and Jace made eye contact with Alec for a second. Even Alec looked as if he pitied her, despite his apparent hatred.

Clary spoke again, "What did the police say?" She then shivered slightly, what had this Luke said? "I'm in the city. I don't know where exactly, with some, um, friends," Jace smirked. "My wallets gone though," she continued, "If you've got some cash, I could take a cab up to your place." Jace's smirk instantly vanished, something that caught Alec's attention, and Alec glowered somewhat smugly at him from his place next to Hodge, as if he had guessed Jace's train of thought.

Jace turned his attention back to Clary, who had dropped the phone suddenly. "What?" she asked, a note of panic escaping her. "But we could call-… But I don't want to stay here! I don't know these people! ...I'm sorry, it's just-…"

But Clary stopped suddenly, and replaced the phone onto it's holder. She looked about to cry. Jace again felt the urge to go up and hug her, and again he suppressed it; it would do no good.

"I take it he wasn't happy to hear from you?" Hodge asked softly. He glanced around the room then, taking in Jace and Alec, both now leaning against armrests and taking in the scene. "I think I'd like to have a talk with Clary. _Alone._" Jace was worried, Hodge never asked questions that were easy to answer, and they often left the subject of the questioning worse for wear.

"Fine, we'll leave you to it," Alec said.

"But that's not fair!" Jace said. "I'm the one who found her! I'm the one who saved her life!" He turned to Clary, putting on a sultry expression. "You want me here don't you?"

But she looked away, and Jace felt not only the disappointment of having to leave, but the rejection that it signified. Had she wanted him in any way, she would have looked him in the eye, and appealed for him to stay, not cast him out.

Alec looked erroneously happy at this. He smiled wickedly, "Not everyone wants you all the time, Jace," he said, and Jace could have sworn he sounded somewhat bitter.

"Don't be ridiculous," Jace said, but he didn't have the heart to put into the comment like he usually did. "Fine, then. We'll be in the weapons room." He made to step out of the library, and Alec followed in silence.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Jace wasn't sure if they were on speaking terms, really, and so he was mildly surprised when Alec actually did follow him through the stone corridors.

After several minutes of walking in silence, they reached the weapons room, and Jace pushed open the heavy oak door, not bothering to hold it open. As he walked into the room that was by far his favorite in the Institute, the sight of gleaming metal, dark pewter, wood and stone greeted him like an old friend. It was comforting to be in this room, after the turmoil of emotions he had experienced in the last few days. He sat down at the long stone table in the center of the room, the smell of polish and leather filling his nostrils, feeling normal for the first time in ages, and set to work on the three seraph blades that had arrived earlier that morning from the Dark Sisters. Alec sat down beside him, pulling out his stele and a sheet of sandpaper.

After working in silence for a slightly awkward period of time, sanding hilts and strengthening blades with specialty runes, Alec spoke. It seemed to be difficult for him.

"I'm sorry."

Jace raised one eyebrow. "For what, exactly?"

"Don't make me say it, Jace." Alec sighed.

"No, for what Alec? Not speaking to me for three days?" Jace was silently fuming, having had to hold back biting Alec's head off for so long. "Getting furious at me for said three days? Avoiding me? Not explaining anything?" He continued. "Was it any of those, or did I get something wrong again, Al?"

"No. I'm sorry for- for all of it." Alec said, hanging his head.

"Including not explaining anything?"

"Yes."

"Including telling me that my total lack of care for other people 'abhors you'?"

"_Yes._"

"For running naked down Seventh Ave. while a flock of werewolves chased you into a brothel, eventually ending in your love for fish and chips as well as the entire Harry Potter series?"

"Jace!"

"Only joking, they don't sell fish and chips in Manhattan."

Alec sighed again, and Jace grinned. "All is forgiven," he said.

Alec grunted at this in acknowledgment, but kept his voice serious, saying, "But I still don't approve of you're little crush."  
>Jace had to fight to keep his expression neutral, saying, "You don't have to approve."<p>

Alec's expression became acidic once more, but to Jace's relief, he said nothing.

They continued to work in silence again, but now it was companionable, as opposed to potentially explosive. Jace thought about Clary while they worked. She seemed to be all he thought about lately. He thought of the way she looked, they way she walked, and especially the way she talked. The way she told off Alec was running through his mind, and he found himself grinning like an idiot and humming a small tune. He didn't notice Alec, staring at him as if he were insane; he didn't think about what would happen if she left; he only concentrated on how she made him feel, for he hadn't felt it in a long time, not for almost ten years.

He was happy.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

**Extra credit if you pinpointed the line from the book in this filler-y chapter, what was it? Huh? I challenge you. It's been a while because I had loads of crap to do, it's all my fault I'll grovel if you want me to. Thanks for all the reviews, they make my days and nights **

**To clarify: Jace is aware that Alec is gay, but not that Alec is so clearly in love with him. Got it? I hate clarifications. **

**A bit of fluff at the end I suppose, not much action, but the next chapter is the Forsaken, so there's something.**

**Please review I'm not at all sure about this chapter, feedback would help.  
>PS (Bonus Question: Who would win in a fight, Albus Perciful Wulfric Brian Dumbledore (alright, that was showing off) or Magnus Bane? Shoutout to the best response, I need to win an argument, so give a reason.)<strong>

**Don't get me wrong, clearly I love normal reviews as well, not just answers to my stupid questions **** (But I do need arguments nonetheless)**

**Thanks again for all the reviewing/favoriting/alerting I love it and I personally think you should all continue, but you know, that's just me. **

**K**


	6. Forsaken

**Disclaimer: Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Batteries not included. **

**Forsaken**

Footsteps. The soft _shick_ of a door sliding open. More footsteps. The rush of a cool draft. The sound of a door sliding closed.

Jace turned around, just in time to see Clary briefly illuminated by the lantern light of the hall outside the weapons room. She looked around the room first, seeming awed by the sight of all manner of weapon and artillery that adorned the walls before she looked towards the table where he and Alec sat. Her eyes appraised Jace, all the way down to his sneakers, and he smirked before speaking. "Where's Hodge?"

"Writing to the silent brothers."

Alec shuddered, a look of disgust evident on his face, no doubt thinking about empty eye sockets and mutilated faces. Jace was perturbed as well. Sure, his worry that Hodge would alarm her was apparently unwarranted, but the Silent Brothers were creepy enough to scare the shit out of Raziel himself.

Clary walked towards them, stopping next to Jace where he sat at the long wooden table. "What are you doing?"

Jace slid over, showcasing the blades that he and Alec had been toiling on. "Putting the last touches on these," Jace said, with a pride-filled look towards the weapons hilts. "Sanvi, Sansanvi, and Semangelaf."

"Those don't look like knives," said Clary doubtfully. "How did you make them? Magic?"

Jace almost burst out laughing at the look on Alec's face. "The funny thing about mundies," Jace said, to stop Alec from sputtering, "is how obsessed with magic they are for a bunch of people who don't even know what the word means."

"I know what it means!" She said defensively.

"No you don't." Jace said seriously. "You just think you do. Magic is a dark and elemental force, not just a lot of sparkly wands and crystal balls and talking goldfish." _Dumbledore ain't got nothin' on Magus Bane, _Jace thought.

"I never said it was bunch of talking goldfish!" She started hotly, but Jace cut her off with a flourish.

"Just because you call an electric eel a rubber duck doesn't make it a rubber duck, does it?" he said. "And God help the poor bastard who decides they want to take a bath with the duckie." _You being the duckie and me being the bastard._

"You're driveling," said Clary, smirking.

"I am not." Jace said, at the same time he thought, _Caught on have you?_

Alec interrupted Jace's retort with, "Yes you are." Jace raised a surprised eyebrow at him, but Alec carried on without noticing. "Look," he said to Clary, "We don't do magic okay? That's all you need to know about it."

Clary's eyes narrowed at this, and she seemed to be holding herself back from retorting. She turned to Jace, "Hodge said I can go home."

Jace felt like he might crack in half. His smile vanished and he stared at her in horror. She was leaving. She was leaving _him._  
>"<em>He said what<em>?" Jace choked. Alec shot him an alarmed glance, his eyes wide.

"To go through my mother's things," she clarified, "If you go with me."

"Jace," Alec said, sounding worried, but Jace ignored him, if he spoke he would give away the intense relief he was feeling. She was staying, and not only was she staying, but was now forced to spend time with him. It was like Christmas had come early.

Clary continued, frowning. "If you really want to prove that my mom or dad was a Shadowhunter, we should look through my mother's things. What's left of them."

Jace half smiled, "Down the rabbit hole," he said, and thankfully his voice was normal. "Good idea. If we go right now, we should have another three, four hours of daylight." He stood up and moved towards the door.

"Do you want me to come with you?" Alec asked, but Jace waved away the offer without looking back.

"No," he said truthfully. "Clary and I can handle this on our own." Jace smiled slightly at the sound of 'Clary and I'.

Jace led Clary from the weapons room towards the main entrance, Clary stumbling slightly as she tried to keep up with him. "Have you got your house keys?" He asked her.

She looked own at her feet, and Jace followed her gaze, confused, until he saw them jangling here, tied to the laces of her acid green converse. "Yeah," she said.

"Good. Not that we couldn't break in, but we'd run a greater risk of disturbing any wards that might be up if we did."

"If you say so," she shrugged.

They continued together through the Institute to the foyer, and as Jace pushed the button to call the elevator, Clary spoke.

"Jace?"

He smiled slightly, "Yeah?"

"How did you know I had Shadowhunter blood?" she asked. "Was there some way you could tell?"

The elevator arrived then, and he stepped aside to let her in. "I guessed," he replied, sliding the door shut with a loud clang. "It seemed like the most likely explanation."

"You _guessed_?" she asked, affronted. "You must have been pretty sure, considering you could have _killed_ me!"

"I was ninety percent sure."

"I see," she growled.

Jace turned to look at her then, and she slapped him so hard across the face that he was knocked backwards into the wall. "What the hell was _that_ for?"

"The other ten percent."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Jace had to give it to Clary, she had style. But even so, he was hurt. Not from the slap, he was far to used to those to care, but she was being completely ungrateful. He had saved her life and she was acting like a child.

Furthermore, even though he knew it wasn't her fault, Jace was angry at her for not realizing how he felt. _Maybe if she had any clue whatsoever about anything at all_… Jace thought. _But she doesn't, so of course the only alternative was to slap me._

He knew he had to find a way to get her to feel for him, but he had absolutely no idea how to do it. He'd never had to think about this type of thing before, on the contrary, it came naturally. What he had to think about was how to drive girls _away_ from him, not how to draw them closer. _Think, Jace think, _he urged himself. What had made him hate rat-boy so much? Clearly she liked him, romantically or not. _Well, he has a terrible sense of style, no confidence, poor eyesight, zero dexterity, and probably lives in a cave with the others of his kind. Well I do live in a cave of sorts with others of my kind. Does that count? _

But Jace knew that he himself could never emulate rat-boy. He had to think of a different plan. As he and Clary made their way through different trains to Brooklyn, he tried to determine what exactly the source of his hate for rat-boy was. Jealousy, he realized. Jace grinned privately, this he new how to manipulate. He was in the middle of forming an elaborate plan when he noticed Clary staring at him. This time she wasn't appraising him, she looked confused, as her emerald eyes traveled the length of his face, finally coming to rest on his own.

He raised an eyebrow, "Can I help you with something?"

She blushed scarlet before saying, "Those girls on the other side of the train are staring at you."

"Of course they are, I am stunningly attractive." Jace said matter-of-factly.

"Haven't you ever heard that modesty is an attractive trait?"

"Only from ugly people," Jace said, leaning towards her confidentially. "The meek may inherit the Earth, but at the moment it belongs to the conceited, like me." Jace glanced around for who she was talking about, and finding two teenage girls sitting side by side, both staring straight at him. They were good-looking, not pretty, exactly, but the type that sported miniskirts and bottle blond hair. Not his usual type, one had buck teeth and the other was unpleasantly orange; Jace tended to go for either willing or perfect, or, he supposed, looking down at Clary, petite and red-haired. All he same, this was the chance to put his unplanned plan into motion. He gave an exaggerated wink towards the girls, aware of Clary's eyes following him. Both of the girls started giggling uncontrollably, causing Clary to heave a huge sigh.

Jace smirked, turning his attention back to her. "How come they can see you?" she asked.

"Glamours are a pain to use, sometimes we don't bother."

"Can they see your tattoos?"

"Marks," Jace corrected. "And yes, doesn't everyone love a bad boy?"

Clary's eyes narrowed, but her face reddened and she dropped the subject.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

As they got off the train and climbed the stairs to the street above, Jace began to hum Clary's tune. "Do you have to do that?" she snapped, "It's annoying." Jace smirked, humming louder. _How ironic, she's annoyed by her own song. _

"I'm sorry I smacked you," she said suddenly, surprising him.

Jace stopped humming, "Just be glad you hit me and not Alec," he warned her. "He would have hit you back."

"He seems to be itching for the chance," she said as they climbed the last steps and strode into the sunlight. "What was it that Alec called you? Para-something?"

"_Parabatai._ It means a pair of warriors who fight together, who are closer than brothers," said Jace. "Alec is more than just my best friend. My father and his father were _parabatai _when they were young. His father is my Godfather – that's why I live with them. They're my adopted family."

"But your last name isn't Lightwood."

"No," he began, but they had reached her house. Clary's heart was beating audibly as she gazed tentatively up at the second floor landing. "It looks the same," she said.

It did look the same, the summer air stirring the garden flowers, the peeling paint and faded sign of Madame Dorothea's shop showcased by the late afternoon light. But Jace's mind went back several nights, to where he had found a house in ruins, blood splattered over wallpaper and carpet. "On the outside," Jace warned, glancing at Clary. She looked so innocent. He felt the need to warn her that they may find all manner of things inside, that they might not be performing a search, but a body count. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his sensor, pressing activating it, and then striding up to the house, Clary in tow.

"So that's a Sensor?" she asked. "What does it do?"

"It picks up frequencies, like a radio does, but these frequencies are demonic in origin."

"Demon shortwave?"

Jace grinned, holding the Sensor out in front of him, "Something like that," he said as the device started to blink faintly. "It's picking up trace activity, but that could just be leftover from that night. I'm not getting anything strong enough for there to be demons present now."

"Good," said Clary, bending over to free her keys from her shoes.

She moved towards the scarred front door, unlocking it, and made to walk inside, but Jace caught her arm in a firm grip. "I'll go first," he told her.

She nodded, and Jace stepped in front of her, into the foyer. It was dark inside, shadows laying thick along the walls and floor. Jace walked across to the other side of the room, towards the marble staircase that led to the second floor, running his hand along the brass banister. It came away coated in dark scarlet. "Blood."

"Maybe it's mine from the other night," Clary said. Her voice wavered slightly, but her face was completely blank, as if she was forcing herself to stay calm.

Jace shook his head, this wasn't human blood. "It'd be dry by now if it were," he said. Then, "Come on." He headed up the stairs, Clary on his heels.

They reached the landing, and though his night vision runes helped him, Clary fumbled with her keys in the near pitch darkness. Jace leaned over her, prepared to help, but she brushed him away. "Don't breathe down my neck," she snapped impatiently, finally managing to open the door, letting waves of cool air flow over them. Again she moved to go inside, and again Jace caught hold of her, pulling her back slightly, saying, "I'll go in first."

Clary hesitated, then seemed to make up her mind, stepping aside to let him pass; Jace was sure she was too nervous to speak. He stepped past her once more and found himself in the entrance hall. Jace followed the hall to the living room, where he emerged to find –

Nothing. The entire apartment had been emptied completely; it looked as though no one had ever lived here. The paintings had been taken from the walls, the furniture removed, the blood and ichor had even been cleaned away. Jace was reminded of something his father had once told him, "_Leave no trace behind, Jonathan. _No. Trace._ No one should know you did something until you _want_ them to know you did something, and then you make them think what you _want_ them to think. What they _should_ think._"

Jace paced the room, frowning. What was there to do now? What should he think? There was nothing to search. Everything was disturbingly, startlingly barren. He walked into the kitchen, hoping for a different scene, for anything at all to go by, but found nothing. Even the appliances had been removed.

"What would demons want with our microwave?" Clary asked, and Jace's frown deepened.

"I don't know," he said, "but I'm not sensing any demonic presence right now. I'd say they're long gone." Clary glanced around as if searching for a Ravener around the corner. "Are you satisfied?" Jace prompted. "There's nothing here."

Clary shook her head. "I want to see my room."

_What the hell goes on in teenage girls minds? _Jace thought,but he resigned himself. "If that's what it takes." He slid the seraph blade he had been holding at the ready back into his pocket, following Clary as she led the way out of the kitchen to her bedroom. Jace stood close behind her as she slowly reached for the door handle, watching her carefully. She had difficulty turning the knob, and before Jace could warn her about entrapments the door blew open, sending them both flying into the wall. Jace saw Clary roll to the other side of the door, clutching her side, as he pulled the blade back out of his pocket and shouted, "_Sansanvi_!" The blade grew to twice it's original size as Jace raised it, looking towards the monster on the threshold. A particularly large Forsaken stood there, male and clad in filthy rags. His matted hair played across his dead features as he raised a gigantic iron axe in one large, grimy hand, and roared, his breath dazing Jace and filling the hallway with a horrible smell of rot and decay. Jace slashed at the Forsaken with the glowing sword, smiling grimly as he was spattered with scarlet. The monster staggered backward, bellowing in pain, and Jace spun, quick as lightning, to grab Clary from the floor and pull her roughly upright.

He pushed Clary ahead of him through the hall, urging her on through the apartment as the Forsaken followed, it's tremendous, leaden footsteps echoing after them. They ran through the entryway and onto the landing beyond, Jace pushing Clary through quickly before spinning around and slamming the door shut behind them. Just as the lock clicked into place he heard and felt the heavy blow of an axe as the door shuddered violently. Jace felt the familiar rush of adrenaline, and he glanced back towards Clary, who had backed towards the staircase, looking terrified. "Get downstairs!" He ordered, "Get out of the-"

The axe came down again, and this time split the door in two. Jace moved away just before it flew off it's hinges, landing in pieces right where he had been standing a second before. Jace was at Clary's side in the next instant, holding the blazing seraph blade before them. "_Get downstairs_!" He shouted again, but his yell was drowned out by the roar of the Forsaken as it blundered through the door towards them, it's huge shape struggling through the frame. Jace saw Clary flatten herself against the wall as the Forsaken passed her, heading straight for him, and was surprised to see how quickly she moved, almost as quickly as he did.

Jace heard the swish of the monster's weapon as it drove through the air towards him, and Jace ducked, causing the axe to impel the wood where his head had just been, leaving a deep groove. Jace threw back his head and laughed, and the Forsaken bellowed in anger, throwing it's weapon aside and lunging at him. As the beast dove, Jace swung the blade in his hand in a fierce arc. It bit deep into the Forsaken's shoulder, and then sliced further, lodging in the giant's throat. The Forsaken swayed where it stood, blood spraying everywhere, coating every surface, and then fell directly towards Jace. He stepped aside, but wasn't quick enough, as the giant fell it grabbed hold of Jace's arm, dragging him down the stairs. Jace cried out as he fell heavily onto the foyer floor, screwing up his eyes in pain as the Forsaken landed on top of his legs in a heap, thrashing wildly.

Jace heard the sound of scurrying feet, and in a matter of seconds Clary was beside him, crouching on the floor, her nose wrinkled in disgust. Jace could feel blood spreading through his clothes, and whether or not it was his own he couldn't tell. He felt Clary lay a hand gently on his chest, "Jace?"

He opened his eyes and she was looking at him, frightened and covered in blood. "Is it dead?" he asked her.

She nodded somberly. "Almost."

Jace tried to move himself out from under the Forsaken, but it's crushing weight was pressed down upon him. "Hell," Jace cringed, "My legs."

"Hold still," Clary commanded, moving towards his head. She slipped her hands under his arms and pulled; Jace was surprised at how strong she was, despite her size. Jace got to his feet, groaning in pain as he felt his left arm. He cradled it to his chest, frowning.

"Is your arm alright?" Clary asked him.

"No. Broken." Jace grunted. "Can you reach into my pocket?" He almost smirked at the look on her face. She nodded, "Which one?"

"Inside jacket, right side," Jace instructed. "Take out one of the seraph blades and hand it to me." He stood stock still as she fumbled with his jacket, eventually managing to retrieve a sword. Jace became hyperaware of the fact that she was pressed against him. She was so close that he could see individual freckles, and smell the lavender of her shampoo as she drew back slightly to slip the sword into his right hand.

Jace tore his eyes away from her face. "Thanks," he said. He gripped the tube-like hilt tightly, said, "Sanvi." And watched it grow, filling the small, grimy room with pure, white light. "Don't watch," he told Clary. He walked across the foyer floor, his arm dangling at his side, to where the Forsaken was thrashing limply. He stood over it for a moment, admiring his handiwork, before bring the blade down, slitting the monster's throat. Blood spouted from the wound, pooling crimson on the floor and slashing across Jace's feet. He stepped back, disgusted.

He felt Clary draw up beside him, and as he turned to look at her he saw she was ashen faced, whether in terror or revulsion Jace didn't know. "I told you not to watch." _But when do you ever do what you're told_?

"I thought it would disappear," she said quietly. "Back to it's own dimension – you said."

"I said that's what happens to demons when they die." Jace said. "That's not a demon." He shrugged off his jacket, flinching as a searing wave of pain shot up his arm. Jace drew out his stele with his good hand, and saw Clary staring at it apprehensively. "This," he said, "is a stele. And this is what happens when Shadowhunters are wounded." He took the stele and activated the _iratze_ on his left bicep, watching as it rearranged itself before somewhat clumsily connecting two parts of the Mark with his non-dominant hand. The warm, familiar sting of the rune flowed through his arm, and he sighed as he felt his bones knitting back together, the pain leaving him. Jace flexed his arm experimentally, and it was functioning again, though somewhat stiffly.

Clary's eyes were wide. "That's amazing," she breathed. "How did you…?"

Jace smiled. "It's an _iratze_, a healing rune. Finishing the rune with the stele activates it." Jace looked down at the dead Forsaken, toeing it roughly. He slipped his stele back into his belt and shrugged on his jacket, saying, "We're going to have to report this to Hodge, he'll freak out."

"Why will he freak?" Clary asked. "And I get that thing isn't a demon, that's why the Sensor didn't register it, right?"

Jace nodded, impressed. "You see the scars all over it's face?"

"Yes."

"They were mad with a stele, like this one," Jace said, gesturing to his belt. "You asked me what happens when you carve Marks into someone who doesn't have Shadowhunter blood," he said grimly. "One Mark will only burn you, but a lot of Marks, powerful ones? Carved into the flesh of a totally ordinary human being with no trace of Shadowhunter ancestry?" Jace nodded towards the body. "You get this. The runes are agonizingly painful, the Marked ones go insane – the pain drives them out of their minds. They become fierce, mindless killers. They don't eat or sleep unless you make them, and they die – usually quickly." At this Clary winced, staring down. "Runes have great power and can be used to do great good," Jace said darkly, "But they can be used for evil. The Forsaken are evil."

Clary looked at him, horrified, and Jace realized he had probably gone too far. "But why would anybody do that to themselves?"

"Nobody would," he said, eyeing Clary. "It's something that gets done to them. By a warlock maybe," he thought of the witch in Pandemonium, "Some Downworlder gone bad. The Forsaken are loyal tot hose who Marked them, and they're fierce killers. They can obey simple commands too. It's like having a slave army." Jace squared his shoulders, stepping over the body of the Forsaken. "I'm going back upstairs."

"But there's nothing there."

"There might be more of them," Jace said. "You should wait here," he added, as she made to follow him. He started up the steps, skirting pools of slick burgundy blood, but a cold, high voice stopped him in his tracks.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," it said. "There are more where the first one came from."

He whirled round from where he stood on the staircase, and looked to Clary, who had a dumfounded look of shock on her face.

"_Madame Dorothea_?"

XXXXXXXXXXXX

**Done. This chapter took a while, I've been in a Harry potter haze, re-reading all of the books before the midnight premier and so I'm sorry. (And it was EPIC if you're wondering.)**

**As always, I love reviews, but I actually want to hear the negative ones, I haven't gotten any so far (which is good I suppose) but I do want to know how the story can get better in your guy's opinions. I edit my own stories, so I don't get prior feedback and I think it'd help, so if you have something to say (constructive, not hazing) I want to know, good reviews are always awesome too of course ;)**

**Love,**

**K**


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